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The Monkeys and Bears Fight Ravana and His Demons (verso), from a Romance of Chandrabhanu and Lavanyavati of Upendra Bhanja (Indian, died 1740)
late 1700s
- Medium
- Charcoal on palm leaf
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 4.8 x 40.2 cm (1 7/8 x 15 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- Eastern India, Odisha
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Edward L. Whittemore Fund
- 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
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This leaf from an 18th-century romance manuscript comes from a section of the book that retells the epic battle between the demon Ravana and the god-hero Rama. The 10-headed multiarmed demon Ravana is the second figure from the right. Rama’s army of monkeys and bears, wielding tree branches and clods of earth, fill the remainder of the leaf. The images were created using a stylus that incised into the palm leaf; charcoal was then rubbed over the leaf and wiped off, leaving only the incised areas in black.
