Page from a Dispersed Bhagavata Purana Series

ca. 1610-1650

This is a page from a manuscript of the Bhagavata Purana, a lengthy Hindu scripture dedicated to the god Krishna, who is said to have lived on earth as a prince. The episode has not been firmly identified, but it 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.