Agoury [aghori, female tantric]

Francois Baltazard Solvyns was a Flemish marine painter who published an ethnographic typology of ‘Hindoos’ and their way of life in 250 coloured etchings. Published in 1796 as ‘Two Hundred and Fifty Coloured Etchings: Descriptive of the Manners, Customs and Dresses of the Hindoos,’ this project was designed in ‘socially descending sections,’ spanning across caste and community groups and documenting their costumes, rituals, and musical instruments, among other details. Women rarely feature in this series and Solvyns explained that women from ‘respectable families’ rarely stepped out of their houses without covering their faces in purdah (a veil of modesty). Despite being a financial failure, this manner of cataloguing the diversity of people in the colonies became a prototype for painters later hired by the East India Company to maintain a visual record of the people of India. This etching depicts a female ‘tantric’ (ascetic) from the Aghori sect—a small group of ascetic Shaiva sadhus (a group devoted to Lord Shiva) based in Uttar Pradesh, India. As part of their ceremonies, they engage in post-mortem practices at cremation and charnel grounds.