An illustration from a Shivapurana series: Sati casts herself into the fire to avenge the insult to her husband Shiva, India, Kangra, circa 1820

J.P. Losty, A Mystical Realm of Love, Pahari Paintings from the Eva and Konrad Seitz Collection, London, 2017, p.200, no.51

The Shivapurana is one of the six Puranas and deals with the mythology of Shiva, his character, his abode, his asceticism, his marriages to Sati and Parvati and the birth of their children. This painting depicts the sacrifice of Daksha, whose daughter Sati married Shiva against his will. Daksha was so unhappy with the union that he organised a sacrifice and invited all the gods except Shiva and Sati. Sati was so angry that she and her husband were excluded that she appeared at the sacrifice and threw herself into the sacrificial fire, thus becoming Sati, ‘the good woman’. Here in the painting Sati is shown in the midst of the fire her body and clothes engulfed by flames and smoke, the surrounding gods look on in horror. In this painting the quality of the portraiture and attention to detail is worthy of note, the figures are portrayed each with their individual reaction to the scene.

This extensive Shivapurana series came from the collection of Mian Ram Singh of Bhawarna, a descendant of the Kangra royal family. The series is made up of different sets one of which is in the Chandigarh Museum and is attributed to Purkhu.

J.P. Losty (Losty 2017, p.200) identifies this painting as belonging to a set that is in the same style in the Baroda Museum that shows Shiva reducing Kama to ashes (see Doshi 1995, p.100). The style of painting is less Purkhu in character and relates more closely to an earlier Shaivite series that has been identified as a Yoga Vasishtha series circa 1800. A page in the Metzger collection shows the sage Vasistha paying homage to Shiva and Parvati and although the atmosphere and scale of the paintings are different they both show a similar treatment in the rendering of the ascetics (see Goswamy and Fischer 2017, no.36).