eye burfi @eyeburfi2 - Tumblr Blog

English: Battle at Lanka, Ramayana, by Sahib Din. Battle between the armies of Rama and the King of Lanka. Udaipur, 1649-1653.

"Sahib Din's illustration shows in grisly detail a fierce landmark battle. It takes place between Rama's army of monkeys and the King of Lanka's army of demons, as Rama (together with the only other human, his brother Lakshmana) fights to free Rama's kidnapped wife Princess Sita. Following a gruesome series of hand-to-hand combats, the fortitude of Rama's monkey army wins through. The illustration is not a 'single frame', but shows several stages of the battle alongside each other. For example, in this scene of battle between the demons and Rama's monkey army, the three-headed figure of the demon general Trisiras occurs in several places – perhaps most dramatically at the bottom left, where he is shown beheaded by Hanuman. The ultimately victorious Rama is shown at the top left, splendidly coloured in blue, calmly contemplating the carnage.”

Text & Image: British Library

#Ramayana #sahib din #mewar ramayana

Kumbhakarna Sleeping. From the Mewar Ramayana

Image: British Library

#Mewar Ramayana

Page from a Dispersed Bhagavata Purana Series, ca. 1610-1650. Opaque watercolor on paper

This is a page from a manuscript of the Bhagavata Purana, a lengthy Hindu scripture dedicated to the god Krishna. The episode depicts a city being besieged by demons. The artist employed a clever device to illustrate the siege with an economy of means, floating the crenellated square of the city walls in space so we can see that it is surrounded on all sides. At either end we see multistoried urban buildings populated by demons (in the upper left unit) and regular people, including a family at the upper right and a woman worshipping a small image of a goddess at the lower left. The compartmentalization and inventive abstraction of this image are both typical of paintings made in Central India, in a region once known as Malwa.

Text & Image: Brooklyn Museum

#Bhagavata Purana

The Gopis Plead with Krishna to Return Their Clothing: Folio from "Isarda" Bhagavata Purana Opaque watercolor and ink on paper ca. 1560–65

Perhaps the greatest of the pre-Mughal Hindu manuscripts known, this edition of the Bhagavata Purana is admired for its pictorial sophistication, its animated narration, and above all, its sheer joie de vivre. This painting captures the essence of the text, which recounts Krishna’s amorous water-sports with the gopis (cowherds). Krishna sits in a tree, the robes of the women fluttering from his shoulder, as the dark lord reaches out to touch them, all and one together. They gaze with warm love-laden eyes and gesture devotion, praying for union with their lord. Hindu devotional worship (bhakti) had rarely been so passionately expressed in manuscript painting. Stylistically, this series evolved from the Caurapancasika group of paintings and forms a bridge with the emerging hybridity represented by the Tutinama. It displays a complex spatial rendering of a river in landscape, which can be traced to sculptural reliefs of the first century but here flows unchecked off the edge of the page, defying the composition’s own frame.

Text: Met Museum

#Bhagavata Purana