RAMA PERFORMS YAJNA WITH THE GOLDEN STATUE OF SITA: A FOLIO FROM A RAMAYANA MANUSCRIPT ATTRIBUTED TO PURKHU AND HIS WORKSHOP

Sotheby's New York, 25 March 1987, lot 152

Rama accompanied by a golden statue of Sita performs the Ashwamehda Yajna. The sage Valmiki participates.  They sit before a ritual Yajna fire.  The slender Mandapa roof-line attracts a flock of green parrots promising good fortune. 

According to the sages, to perform this Yajna (ritual) Rama must be married, but his wife Sita had already departed the Earth.  So he married a golden replica of Sita to maintain the purity of the rite.  Sita is cast in gold to express her virtue and purity having survived the test of fire.

The cubist manner of alternating white marble and pink brick architecture, criss-crossing the top of the painting, is a notable feature of the studio of Purkhu.  With red outer borders and white ruled lines.  At top in white ink on red border: (folio) 38 and Ayodhya (kanda). Verso: text in lines of black ink Devanagari script.

Depictions of Hindu epic narratives such as this folio from a dispersed Ramayana series, can lead to tour-de-force paintings in the hands of Pahari painters influenced by the studio of the artist Purkhu (active 1790-1820) considered the principal master of the royal atelier of Maharaja Sansar Chand (r. 1775-1823) of Kangra - arguably the single most influential painting studio of the Pahari region in the first half of the Nineteenth Century.

For similar works, see W.G. Archer, Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills, vol. II, p. 197; B. N. Goswamy and E. Fischer, 'Pahari Masters', Artibus Asiae, Zurich, 1992, pp. 367-87; and J. Guy & J. Britschgi, Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India 1300-1900, New York, p. 176. See also Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession no. 65.419 and San Diego Museum of Art, accession nos. 1990.1303 and 1990.1302.