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Yaja and Upayaja perform a sacrifice for the emergence of Dhrishtadyumna from the fire, from Adi-parva (volume one) of the Razm-nama (Book of Wars) adapted and translated into Persian by Mir Ghiyath al-Din Ali Qazvini, known as Naqib Khan…
attributed to Bilal Habshi (probably Ethiopian, active late 1500s)
1598
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Page: 29.8 x 16.8 cm (11 3/4 x 6 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- Mughal India
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
- 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
Fire sacrifice was central to the Indo-European people who entered the Indian subcontinent as early as 1800 BC. Only Brahmins, a social class of priests, had access to the sacred texts called the Vedas, which explained the meaning and process of the fire sacrifice, considered by orthodox Hindus as a way to communicate with the gods. A king named Drupada in ancient India sponsored this fire sacrifice in order to generate a powerful warrior who would be able to slay the enemy who took half his kingdom. Seated around an altar in the sacrificial enclosure, Brahmins pour oblations into the fire and recite the prayers necessary to generate the divine warrior Dhrishtadyumna, shown here in full battle armor at birth. The inscription below gives the title and the name of the artist, Habshi, which means “Ethiopian,” suggesting the presence of Africans in the royal Mughal workshop. The story of how the warrior Dhrishtadyumna was generated from the fire sacrifice is written on this page. When King Drupada lost half his kingdom to a military master named Drona, he needed a gift from the gods to defeat him: a new warrior born to accomplish this mission. In order to obtain this gift, King…
