"The Manifest Deceived Heroine," Illustrated folio from a dispersed Rasikapriya (Lover’s Breviary) of Keshav Das

The picture surface is divided in half to accommodate three scenes depicted in continuous
narrative. Radha, Krishna’s beloved, appears with her confidante (sakhi) in each of these three
scenes. In the lower rectangle she is standing, dressed in an orange skirt, with her confidante
while the two women discuss Krishna. They are highlighted by a cluster of opposing trees. A
large, pot­bellied vessel (lota) containing water appears in the red niche inserted into the brick
staircase on the far right. In the upper register, Radha, seated on a bed, is having a
conversation with her sakhi. In the next scene the two women are picking flowers (a gift for
Krishna?) from a tree. This scene takes place at night, as is indicated by the crescent moon in
the blue sky.
Using continuous, or sequential, narrative to depict a long story from a Hindu epic or a
complicated story from a Sanskrit love poem is one of the ancient devices of Indian art.
In a single frame the same figure will appear many times to indicate that sequential scenes from
the same narrative are being depicted. This type of continuous, or sequential, narration is
somewhat akin to the Western art of the comic strip. But in India there are no conversational
bubbles: as in Indian classical dance, speech is conveyed by the hand gesture, or the mudra, which each figure employs. And the text for the incident being depicted is contained in the text
panel at the top of the page.
This sparkling painting is actually one folio from a much larger series illustrating a very
famous Hindi text, the Rasikapriya (1591) of Keshava Dasa. (For discussion of this text and
another illustration of this same text, see cat. no. 21.)

Inscription: Inscribed on the front in black ink on the yellow text panel with four lines of Hindi, or Braj Bhasha, text written in devanagari script: the 24th poem in the seventh chapter of the
text (for an English translation, see Dehejia, H., 2013, pp. 81–82); also notated with a short label on the front in black ink on the red upper border in Rajasthani written in devanagari script. Inscribed on the reverse in pencil in English: “VMA England 2-2- 54” and the number “287”; also inscribed in black ink in English: “Sed.C”; also inscribed with one line in
black ink written in devanagari script: “number 58 volume 85 samvat 1751 [a.d. 1694] Asu [perhaps a name] caretaker” and the Indic number “112”; also a short notation in black ink

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