Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper, mounted within wide beige coloured borders.

An illustration from a Bhagavata Purana series.

Inscribed on the verso in Sanskrit and Hindi above an effaced Bikaner palace collection stamp. The inscription above the stamp reads:

21 duvarka ji(?) padhair(ya?)

meaning “arrival at Dvarka”.

The inscription to the left is more difficult to decipher. Beginning with “duvarika”, and continuing with “lane rukmini”, meaning “bringing Rukmini to Dvarka”, the sense is in keeping with the central inscription. Since Krishna is shown arriving at Dvarka with Rukmini in his chariot, this painting probably illustrates verse 53, chapter 54, from Book X of the Bhagavata Purana:

“Having vanquished all the monarchs in his way, the lord brought Rukmini, the daughter of Bhishmaka to his city, Dvarka, and married her according to Shastric injunction…”(1)

Krishna has just abducted Rukmini from the shrine of the goddess Ambika before her marriage to Shishupala, the powerful king of the Chedis. According to plan, Krishna has carried Rukmini away in his chariot while Balarama’s forces hold off the furious Shishupala and his allies. The frenzy of battle between vast armies is not depicted in this painting. The culmination of recent events, the arrival of Krishna at his capital with Rukmini, is depicted with linear simplicity, the narrative distilled to only the most essential elements of the story.

Reading from left to right, we see the couple in a golden chariot drawn by two horses. They are framed by the rectangle block of red featured consistently in many contemporary series to designate significant sections of the narrative, here suggesting the interior of the chariot and highlighting the presence of the royal couple. A single attendant standing in for Krishna’s entourage announces his approach. Another man opens the door to the city, a few palace buildings sufficient to conjure up Dvarka. The long journey they have undergone is indicated by the distant, wavy horizon, the lack of recession conveying the vast expanses traversed. Two small birds flying in the sky reinforce the sense of distance but also function as metaphors of freedom and union. The style is the opposite of grandiose; a sense of intimacy, even secrecy, is admirably conveyed.

A painting from this Bhagavata Purana series in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, depicts the next stage in the narrative, “The Marriage of Krishna and Rukmini”. The marriage is depicted as a humble affair, with little of the turmoil of preceding events or the regal pomp conveyed by the text.

A painting almost identical in construction to the Houston page is in the Alvin O. Bellak Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Depicting “The Marriage of Satyabhama and Krishna”, this is published in Darielle Mason et al, Intimate Worlds: Indian Paintings from the Alvin O. Bellak Collection, 2001, pp. 66-67, no. 18. The Houston and Philadelphia paintings would originally have followed the present work when the complete series was still intact.

According to John Seyller, this Bhagavata Purana series represents the process by which popular Mughal painting slowly germinated distinctive regional idioms. The paintings demonstrate the way in which artists employed at one of the regional courts of Rajasthan introduced a few features of Mughal painting into an existing indigenous traditional.(2) Attempts at imparting a three-dimensional quality are seen alongside figures that float against blocks of colour. While some of the garments are Mughalised, most of the figures retain the squarish heads and schematic faces of the indigenous tradition.(3)

This series has long been associated with painting at Bikaner, primarily because some of its paintings bear a stamp indicating that they were part of the Bikaner royal collection. Although that now-dispersed collection once contained works from many different schools of Indian painting, the spare compositions, cool palette, and pronounced linear quality of this Bhagavata Purana series are akin to those of paintings produced at Bikaner in the last third of the seventeenth century.(4)

References:

1. The Bhagavata Purana, (trans.) G. V. Tagore, Vol. 10, 1978, p. 1602.
2. John Seyller in Darielle Mason et al, Intimate Worlds: Indian Paintings from the Alvin O. Bellak Collection, 2001, pp. 66-67, no. 18.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.