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Feast where Vishnu decides he will incarnate as King Dasharatha’s sons, from Chapters 14–15 of the "Bala Kanda" (Book of Childhood) of a Ramayana (Rama’s Journey)
c. 1810
- Medium
- Gum tempera and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 27.7 x 39.4 cm (10 7/8 x 15 1/2 in.); Painting: 23.5 x 34.7 cm (9 1/4 x 13 11/16 in.)
- Culture
- Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection; Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase 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
The women’s quarters of a palace occupy the right side of the composition. In the courtyard to the left, gods, including the blue Vishnu, four-headed Brahma, Surya (Sun), Chandra (Moon), Indra with eyes all over his body, and Shiva with snakes in his hair who sits with his minions, feast on food served on plates and bowls of leaves. Vishnu and Indra have taken off their crowns for the meal; the crowns are guarded on raised platforms in the background. The Pahari artist has depicted Dhaam, a local feast prepared by hereditary priest-chefs in accordance with strict Hindu rules of nutritional purity.
