Rukmini at the Parvati Temple: Folio from a Bhagavata Purana Manuscript

About the Artist

Masters of the Dispersed Bhagavata Purana
Active 1520-30, in north India, probably Delhi-Agra region

The painters responsible for the series of paintings in this manuscript belonged to a workshop-studio most likely active around Delhi or Agra, where wealth generated by the political stability of the Sultanate rulers of the region attracted Hindu and Jain merchant communities. This manuscript is widely known as the Palam Bhagavata Purana, after a suburb of Delhi, the hometown of one of the individuals named in an owner’s colophon, although the style can also be associated with Agra. It is the earliest known illustrated manuscript of this text, and remains one of the most ambitious. Daniel Ehnbom has estimated that the original series consisted of around 300 folios, of which some 200 are extant. This undertaking was artistically challenging, expensive, and necessitated a well-organized studio in which highly literate scribes (the text is written in a precise and correct Sanskrit) and experienced painters worked together. The only illustrated manuscript to rival this one is the Hamzanama, produced under very different circumstance, namely imperial Mughal patronage and direction. We know nothing of the circumstance of its production beyond the evidence of the surviving pages, which suggest that it is a workshop production for a devout Vaishnava patron, very probably one with close links to the Vallabha bhakti cult at Vrindavan, near Mathura, the place of Krishna’s childhood. In all probability, such a patron was a wealthy merchant emulating courtly patronage through the commissioning of a work of intense devotion that rivaled Sultanate Muslim productions of the time. The manuscript may have been the joint property of two individuals named in several colophons, Sa. Mitharam and Sa. Nana, perhaps brothers; one appearance of Sa. Mitharam is accompanied by the phrase Palan nagar Madhye (in the city of Palam), suggesting that they were residents of this town, near Delhi. Independent manuscript evidence, notably the Palam Mahapurana, dated 1540, established this town as a known center for scribes and painters.

The Palam Bhagavata Purana embodies many characteristics of the Caurapancasika group style and expresses a single aesthetic, achieved using a shared visual vocabulary. These conventions dictate that flat washes of intense color, most typically red, fill the ground, allowing no possibility for special perspective rendering. Figure types and their expressive gestures follow well-understood conventions, displaying silhouette profiles with large almond-shaped eyes, and a strict dress code, the women wearing choli bodices drawn tightly over full breasts and waistcloths, the men in crossover jackets and jama combined with distinctive kulahdar-style turbans. Palatial architectural settings in a Sultanate manner recur throughout the series, even though these events as described in the text are set in a rural village, a strong indicator of the manuscript’s probable origins in the Delhi area, the home of the Lodi Sultanate until its overthrow by the Mongol Babur in 1526.