Indian Miniature Paintings

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A 19th Century Indian Miniature Folk Painting on paper from the Exotic Orissa Area of India. 

This manuscript contains eleven lines of Sanskrit text with a lovely miniature depicting a possible marriage scene between an elegantly dressed young couple. 

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If anyone is interested taking an online course on the introduction to Sanskrit, please check out an online course through the Academy of Indian Philosophy. 

Introductory Sanskrit

Course Description: This online course offers an introduction to the Sanskrit language in Devanāgarī script. Beginner students will develop skills in reading, writing, pronunciation, and vocabulary. This introductory course offers students self-paced learning at the comfort of their homes. Completion of this course ensures that students will develop skills towards advanced literacy in the Sanskrit language.

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A Beauty at Her Toilette

Seated on a gold dais with her accoutrements before her, a partially clad beauty holds an embroidered green shawl over her head with her hair falling in loose strands at her back, the scene set on a garden terrace with rows of blooming flowers and a fountain below, framed by borders painted with scrolling foliage on a gold leaf ground, stamped on reverse Huzur Office-Miraj Junior State

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An Illustration depicting Krishna with Red Dye During The Holi Festival

Krishna aims his red-dye sprayer at a seated Radha who covers her eyes as she raises a hennaed palm. On a green terrace two friends throwing red in a joyous evocation of Holi, the springtime festival of renewal.

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Title: "The Villagers Play Hide and Seek; Krishna Discovers Radha Hidden in a Clump of Bushes," Folio from the "Kangra Bihari" Sat Sai (Seven Hundred Verses)

Artist: Fattu

Date: ca. 1785

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Title: "Krishna Holds Up Mount Govardhan to Shelter the Villagers of Braj", Folio from a Harivamsa (The Legend of Hari (Krishna))

Date: ca. 1590–95

Museum Description:

The Hindu epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and other texts such as the Harivamsa, a genealogy of Hari (or Krishna), were translated into Persian and illustrated for the first time during Akbar’s reign (1556–1605). Unlike other manuscript projects for which the Mughal court artists inherited a tradition of iconography and style from earlier Iranian manuscripts, they had to invent new compositions for these works. The present folio depicts Krishna holding up Mount Govardhan to protect the villagers of Braj from the rains sent by the god Indra.

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Title: "Women Visiting a Hermit", Folio from the Davis Album

Date: 18th century

Museum Description:

Visitation scenes to holy men became a popular genre in 18th century Mughal painting, with both male and female visitors being depicted. Here we see a hermit receiving a group of women, one of whom holds a child. He is seated on a mat before his simple dwelling while on the far bank of the winding river another style of round village thatched hut may be seen.

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Flowering Tree ca. 1700

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Ragini, possibly Asavari: Folio from a Ragamala Series

Museum Description:

In this pictorial metaphor for a raga (a musical phrase that is used as the basis for improvisation), a lady charms the snakes entwining the adjacent trees. The tree motifs frame the young woman, seen against a monochromatic ground with arching skyline, gesturing to the snakes who respond to her movements. In a related theme, the Abhiri Ragini, the woman feeds the snakes milk from a bowl.

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A Bejewelled Maiden with a Parakeet ca. 1670–1700

Museum Description:

This young beauty seen through a cusped arch has been idealized as the daughter of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The convention of a woman holding a parakeet is seen in Deccani painting and textiles and is also known from a long-standing tradition in Indian sculpture; here the prominent use of gold is typical of Deccani taste. The bird sits on the maiden’s henna-reddened fingers, each one of which is separately adorned by a diamond ring.

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Radha and Krishna Walk in a Flowering Grove (recto); Krishna Fluting (verso)ca. 1720 (recto); ca. 1750–75 (verso)

The Kota Master

Museum Description:

Krishna and Radha gaze into each other’s eyes during a sunset walk. Their love is expressed by the multitude of birds, the flowering trees, and the intertwining of their bodies and garments. This quintessential Indian idea—that nature echoes human passion—is beautifully manifested in this work by a master who has successfully translated emotion into visual delight. The personification of nobles as the lovers Krishna and Radha was a popular pictorial theme in Kota and other Rajasthani courts. The subject relates to the poetry of the time.

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A Lady and Her Duenna: Page from a Dispersed Rasikapriya (Lover's Breviary) 1685–92

Ibrahim

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RADHA AND KRISHNA IN THE GROVE. Kangra, c. 1785. Victoria and Albert Museum Description: With Plate 1, an example of the delicate poetic style which from Guler antecedents came to maturity at Kangra early in the reign of Raja Sansar Chand. The images which serve as a symbolic background are, in each case, taken from Hindi and Sanskrit poetry. Particularly common symbols for physical enchantment were the lotus plants which appear, nodding and swaying in the stream. If a poet wished to praise a lady's hands and feet, he said they were 'soft as lotuses' or if his concern was with her features, he wrote 'Your face is lovely as a lotus flower'. A shapely arm was 'graceful as a lotus stalk', while lovers sitting by a stream immediately called to mind the same exquisite plant with its delicate leaves and matchless blossom. 'My love and I sit together Like lotus and its leaves.' Besides the lotus, flowering trees were also regarded as symbolic—their spear-shaped branches, laden with flowers, being treated as poetic parallels for upsurging love. The waxen stems of plantains were other images which brought to mind the absent lover2 while their large cool leaves were often used in poetry as romantic symbols for a girl's smooth thighs. Even more common as an image for embracing lovers was the creeper entwined about a trunk while streams with tossing waves vividly evoked the force and flow of passion. In the picture, all these images are fused in one - form, line and colour all serving to express and emphasize the associations of poetry. The girl's hair is treated with the same twining lines as is the water in the stream, the edge of her dress with the same scalloped curves which appear in the leaves of the lotuses. The curving outlines of her thigh are paralleled by the oval plantain leaves, while the thick creeper coiling round the tree echoes the blending postures of the two lovers. It is in ways such as these that Kangra artists accomplished the supremely difficult task of translating poetry into painting, creating in the process a type of art which, if literary in origin, transcends literature in its ultimate achievement.

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Krishna applies Kajal (kohl) to Radha's eyes

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Krishna leaning against a tree

Location: Kanoria 

Date:1780 CE

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Bhairavi Ragini: Folio from a ragamala series (Garland of Musical Modes)

The Met Description:

A female devotee is worshiping at a Shaiva shrine inside a palace compound, with a lotus pond in the foreground. She has placed an offerings of fresh flowers on the linga and, as we know from the ragamala verse written above, is singing hymns in praise of her Lord, accompanied by hand cymbals (manjira). Intense, glowing colors underscore the true theme of this subject, the passion of devotion (bhakti).

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Krishna Woos Radha: Page from the Dispersed "Boston" Rasikapriya (Lover's Breviary)

The Met description:

The text states: "Secret love in union and in separation is known when lover and beloved are illegitimately joined." Here, Krishna woos a reluctant Radha during a walk in a glade.