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Lot Essay
The Rasamanjari, a poem by the Sanskrit poet Bhanudatta, concerns nayikas – women in love. Strongly influencing later Hindi literature like the Riti and Rasikapriya, the text was a particularly popular subject in the Pahari region. The present painting has been cropped leaving no caption and has a plain reverse meaning it cannot be definitively linked to the Rasamanjari but it seems to well illustrate verse 46. This verse tells of the Khandita Nayika, the wronged heroine whose lover has strayed. In the verse the nayaka and his friend are meant to be conversing of his wife’s anger but in our painting we are shown the moment of confrontation itself.
In the right-hand corner of the page the sun rises over a hill and the heroine, with a quite furious expression, confronts her absent lover. She holds out a hand in exasperation and yet, despite her clear displeasure the nayaka appears completely unperturbed. His white jama unruffled and a calm expression on his face perhaps the only sign of his misadventures being a slightly hastily tied turban with locks of hair escaping from underneath. The dating of the painting is inferred from the length of the jama which, obscuring all but the very bottoms of the nayaka's feet, was a length not obtained until the reign of Muhammad Shah (r.1719-48). Two illustrations from an earlier Nayaka-Nayika-bheda from Nurpur and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (IS.127-1951) are relevant to the ours with the first seemingly showing the nayika on a pavilion watching her errant husband returning home, and the second of a composition very close to ours.
In the right-hand corner of the page the sun rises over a hill and the heroine, with a quite furious expression, confronts her absent lover. She holds out a hand in exasperation and yet, despite her clear displeasure the nayaka appears completely unperturbed. His white jama unruffled and a calm expression on his face perhaps the only sign of his misadventures being a slightly hastily tied turban with locks of hair escaping from underneath. The dating of the painting is inferred from the length of the jama which, obscuring all but the very bottoms of the nayaka's feet, was a length not obtained until the reign of Muhammad Shah (r.1719-48). Two illustrations from an earlier Nayaka-Nayika-bheda from Nurpur and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (IS.127-1951) are relevant to the ours with the first seemingly showing the nayika on a pavilion watching her errant husband returning home, and the second of a composition very close to ours.