An Illustration from the Bhagavata Purana

The scene depicts Arjuna and Krishna who are out on a hunt, pausing by the banks of the Yamuna to quench their thirst. Arjuna chances upon a beautiful young woman named Kalindi and enraptured by her beauty follows her into the forest.

Related leaves are in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum; see Maggs Bros. Ltd., Bulletin No. 7, no.174, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; see Pratapaditya Pal, Art of Nepal, Los Angeles, 1985, p.228; and the Binney Collection, see W. G. Archer, Rajput Miniatures from the Collection of Edwin Binney 3rd, Portland, 1969, p. 64. 

The planar treatment of the pictorial space with highly stylized rocky outcrops interspersed with brightly colored trees, is closely related in style to Central Indian paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries from the Mewar and Malwa regions. The dense foliage is inhabited by birds and animals and enclosed by a river in the foreground.

The current lot is particularly animated in its rendering of the trees and swirling waters of the river.