"The Sage Durvasa Helps the Gopis Quiet the Yamuna River," Folio from the dispersed "Parimoo" Bhagavata Purana (The Ancient Story of God)

This scene illustrates an incident described in the Krishna legends. Radha, Krishna’s
beloved, and three of her cow­herding attendants (gopis), have approached the hermitage of
the great sage Durvasa. The ladies are feeding the green­skinned sage, and offering him even
more delicious food from the bowls balanced on their heads. The ladies wish to join Krishna
(not visible in this painting) for a picnic on the opposite bank of the Yamuna River. But as the
river goddess Yamuna opposes what she assumes will be a licentious gathering, she has
caused the river which she personifies to rise to an impassable height, blocking the advance of
the four ladies. Thus, in the present picture, Radha and the gopis are entreating the well­fed
Durvasa to overcome the river goddess’ barrier, to use his influence with her, and to allow the
ladies to cross to join Krishna on the opposite bank. (1)
Of the four works in the Early Rajput Style in the Kronos Collection (Cat. Nos. 1­4), this
painting of ca. 1580 is the latest in date and the most indebted to Mughal painting. (2) The debt
to the Mughals is seen in the treatment of the splashing water and in the naturalism and
directness of the emotions and gestures depicted here.
During the time most of the Indian paintings in this catalogue were produced, the
Mughals, originally from Central Asia, controlled much of India. The traditional Hindu rulers of
Rajasthan, Central India, and the Punjab Hills were kept in office by the Mughals, yet they
served only at the pleasure of the Mughal emperor, to whom they swore allegiance. Two of the
duties of these local rulers were to serve as officers of state in the Mughal empire, and to attend
the Mughal emperor at his imperial court, either in Agra, or later in Delhi. During their stay in the
imperial capital these local rulers became acquainted with Mughal painting and the workshops
that produced it. They saw that court painting and court­sponsored workshops were one of the
principle adornments of a great court and a great king. Consequently they hankered to possess
everything they had seen at the imperial court, duplicating what the Mughal emperor possessed
in their own local courts back home. In this way the influence of Mughal etiquette, life styles,
and painting spread throughout India, to blend with and enrich local traditions of court painting
in Rajasthan, Central India, and the Punjab Hills. (For the Mughal influence on the emerging
Rajput style, see also cat. no. 10.)
Although the earlier rulers of the empire were patrons of art, Mughal painting is really the
creation of the great Akbar (r. 1556­1605), who incorporated most of north India into his
expanding realm, including the former Hindu kingdoms in Rajasthan, Central India, and the
Punjab Hills. During the second half of the sixteenth century Mughal painting, a blend of
imported Persian and native Hindu and Muslim traditions, became a powerful unifying force that
enjoyed enormous prestige and influence throughout Akbar’s India. Within its highly formalized
boundaries, Mughal painting introduced a new world of naturalism to Indian art, resulting in the
creation of many new subjects, expanded compositions, three dimensional space, aerial
perspective, solid modelling, and an emphasis on fine drawing, exquisite finish, and a greatly
expanded palette. Over time these diverse features were incorporated into Rajput painting,
blending with the fiercely dramatic Early Rajput Style (cat. nos. 1­4), and enjoying a kind of
combustible growth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the Mughal empire was
extremely strong and the local kingdoms were relatively weak. Later on, i.e. in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, or in any event prior to l858, when the Mughal empire ceased to exist,
Indian painting became neither Rajput or Mughal, yet a blend of the two. By this time the two
great traditions, initially separate, had cross pollinated one another.
Mughal influence is apparent in the roughly thirteen other paintings from the Parimoo
Series that have survived. (3) This outside influence was crucial to the various figure types
depicted in the Series, the men not wearing the kuhladar turban but the much smaller and
more closely wrapped atpati turban, and to the depiction of landscape and the configuration of
the polyp­like and multi­colored rocks. As these Mughal inspired features were popularized in
Akbar’s influential Hamza Nama project of ca. 1557­72, a monumental undertaking involving the
oversize illustration of fourteen volumes of text, it is presumed that the Parimoo Series was
completed after the Hamza Nama project was finished in 1572. (4) Yet the Series was made
not for the Mughal court, but for a Hindu patron or monarch at some distance from the imperial
The ‘Parimoo Bhagavata Purana is named for Ratan Parimoo, the scholar who first
brought the Series to the attention of the academic world. (5) To the best of my knowledge, the
Kronos work is the only picture from the Series to exist in the West.
(1) I am indebted to Gita Patel and Saachi Sood for this information.
(2) For an exhaustive discussion of the Early Rajput Style, see Karl Khandalavala and
Moti Chandra, New Documents of Indian Painting (Bombay: Prince of Wales Museum of
Western India, 1969), pp. 57­109. See also Cat. No. 2.
(2) Ratan Parimoo, “A New Set of Rajasthani Paintings”, Lalit Kala, No. 17, pg. 10
(3) Ibid, pg. 13
(4) For the Hamza Nama, see John Seyller, The Adventures of Hamza (Washington:
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2002).

Inscription: Inscribed on the front along the top border in black ink in rustic Sanskrit written in devanagari script: “51 / Durvasa, the irascible [sage], in the forest”

ex collection: Sviatoslav Roerich, Natesan, 1986

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