An Illustration from a Ragamala Series: Kanheri Ragini

Fairly good overall condition. Light crease on the sky above and crease along center. Minor losses to pigment especially in white areas. Red folio borders have suffered some abrasion and are frayed at the corners.
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Ragamala paintings are inspired by a genre of poetry that assigned a specific form, mood and ambience to various musical modes, known as ragas. The paintings seek to convey the emotional state of the corresponding music as well as its poetic symbolism using specific iconographic forms that were first enumerated by Mesakarna, a court priest in Rewa, who composed his Ragamala in 1570.

Ragamala paintings remained an extremely popular suject in all the schools of Indian miniature painting that flourished in subsequent centuries. Each regional atelier developed its unqiue devices to identify and distinguish the families of ragas and raginis and the generations of artists who produced these paintings are also known to have introduced their own creative elements into their works.

Kanheri Ragini, pictured here, takes the form of a dark-skinned Lord holding a sword and a tusk. This iconography seems to have been in vogue in Central India and in some Rajasthani schools. The facial and figural styles and the elaborate architectural details also suggest influences from the Northern Deccan. Compare with illustrations of Kannada Raga from Marwar and Amber, see Klaus Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, Basel, Paris and New Delhi, 1973, p. 236, nos. 167 & 168.