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Pradyumna and Samvara fight with maces, from the "Large Basohli Bhagavata Purana"

c. 1760–65

Medium: Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
Classification: Painting
Dimensions: Image: 28 x 38.3 cm (11 x 15 1/16 in.); Overall: 30.2 x 41 cm (11 7/8 x 16 1/8 in.)
Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
Museum: Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Credit line: Gift of the Mundane Club
Rights: Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it: Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed

About this work

Paintings from this Pahari series often place figures against boldly contrasting backgrounds. Here, the scene that takes place a moment before the prince Pradyumna’s mace, or club, vanquishes the demon Samvara is frozen in time.

Years before, the demon heard a prophecy that Pradyumna would one day murder him. Hearing this, Samvara kidnapped Pradyumna as an infant and threw him into the ocean, where a fish swallowed him. The fish was caught and brought to Samvara’s kitchen, where the woman who would become his wife, Mayavati, discovered the baby still alive in its belly. Pradyumna lived to fulfill the prophecy, eventually killing the demon in this fight.