Battle Scene

“With (a) crescendo of energy, animated gestures, and vivid thumbnail characterizations”
(1), the men in this painting, wearing the kuhladar turban (a mound­like cap encircled by a
turban length) fashionable in the early sixteenth century, and mounted on elephants and horses,
make joyous war against one another. This vigorous battle scene is actually the lower right
quarter of a much larger picture depicting the same battle, yet in greater detail. (The actual
event was either a real battle or a mythological battle taken from traditional Hindu literature.)
The other fragments of the same, now dismembered picture are in the private collection of
J.P.Goenka, the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art, and in the former private
collection of Stuart Cary Welch. (2) When arranged in the proper sequence and viewed
together, these three fragments, and the Kronos picture, make a very grand composition,
suggesting the now lost wall painting on which all four pictures must depend.
At one time the unusually large battle scene to which this picture once belonged was
folded in four. As time passed and the original picture was folded and unfolded, the sheet on
which it was painted came apart along its folds. Thus, in earlier years, the four parts were
viewed as separate entities and only incorporated much later with the pile of pictures comprising
the so­called ‘Palam Bhagavata Purana’ (see cat. no. 1). Daniel Ehnbom was the first to
recognize that the four battle scenes belonged not to the ‘Palam Bhagavata Purana, but to a
unique work almost four times the size of any single Palam illustration. Both productions were
probably made in the same sophisticated (Hindu palace?) workshop. Be that as it may, the
four fragments of this very damaged work, as well as the ‘Palam” illustrations of ca. 1520­30,
are considered to be key monuments of the Early Rajput Style, a style of enormous importance
in the history of later Rajput and Indian painting.
The Early Rajput Style is often called the Chaurapanchasika Style, in honor of the
famous Series of c. 1550 or earlier, comprising eighteen paintings (originally about fifty)
illustrating the twelfth century manuscript by Bilhana of the same name. The Chaurapanchasika
Series was originally in the private collection of N.C. Mehta (with one painting in the collection of
the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi). But the 17 N.C. Mehta pictures are now awaiting transfer
to the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum, Ahmedabad. (3)
The Early Rajput Style represents a complete break with an earlier tradition of medieval
painting in India (the so­called Western Indian Style). This new Style is infinitely more dynamic
and emotionally charged. It probably had something to do with the cult of personal devotion
(bhakti) that was sweeping the Indian subcontinent at this time, and nothing to do with the styles
of Islamic painting that were also taking root in India at this time. Yet like the earlier Indic
Western Indian Style, the Early Rajput Style, despite its emotional intensity, employed only a
very limited number of formal elements: a
The key monuments of the Early Rajput Style are an illustrated manuscript, the
Aranyaka Parvan dated 1516 in the Asiatic Society, Mumbai; the ‘Palam Bhagavata Purana
Series of ca. 1520­30 (see cat. no. 1); a battle scene in four parts of approximately the same
date (see cat. no. 2); the Chaurapanchasika Series of ca. 1550 largely in the former collection
of N.C. Mehta; an illustrated Candayana manuscript of ca. 1550 in the Lahore Muse um; the
Gita Govinda Series of ca. 1550­60 largely in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu
Sangrahalaya (Prince of Wales Museum of Western India); the dispersed ‘Isarda Bhagavata
Purana’ of ca. 1560­65 (see cat. no. 3); and the ‘Paramoo Bhagavata Purana’ of ca. 1580 (see
cat. no. 4).
limited palette (red, yellow, and green being the principal colors); stocky yet wide­eyed
figure types; shallow space; bifurcated architecture; and solid backgrounds, the differing
background colors differentiating separate moments of the narrative. The invariably religious or
traditional Hindu content of the Early Rajput Style, admixed with later Mughal influence, was the
basis for all later Rajput painting, which owes a profound debt to the Early Rajput Style.

For illustrations of the Early Rajput Style see Karl Khandalavala and Moti Chandra, New
Documents of Indian Painting, (Bombay: The Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, 1969),
figs. 178­202 .

Doris Weiner

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.