Sugriva, King of the Monkeys, Leads Rama and Lakshmana through the Forest; Illustrated folio from the dispersed Shangri Ramayana series (Style III)

Ravana sits in his palace flanked by demon attendants, one of whom holds a fly whisk, while Angada (the son of the slain monkey king Vali) takes Ravana’s ten-headed crown. While this scene is not included in Valmiki’s Ramayana, it does frequently appear in paintings from the Punjab Hills. The story culminates with Rama crowning Ravana’s brother Vibhishana as the rightful ruler of Lanka. The juxtaposition of key narrative figures with patterned architectural elements is characteristic of later paintings from the Shangri series.




This late work from the Shangri Ramayana series could easily be confused with paintings from the slightly later Mankot series, which share the same deep green backgrounds and high horizons defined by white clouds. However, the animated figures in this work seem to float above the ground as they travel through a spatially ambiguous forest filled with multicolored trees. These features together with the bold graphic treatment of the figures and details like the flowers in Sugriva’s crown recall earlier works in the Shangri Ramayana series.