We are in a lush green valley with grassy slopes. In the top righthand corner, atop a green hill, we see part of Ravana’s golden palace indicating that we are still on Lanka.

The fight is over, Ravana is dead and our scene follows the liberation of Sita from Ravana and her subsequent ordeal by fire, a test of her purity demanded by Rama. Vibhishana brings gifts of perfumed balms, clothes and adornments. This scene precedes Rama and Sita travelling in the golden chariot, loaned to them by Vibhishana, to Ayodhya.

The ‘Second Guler’ Ramayana (the first being that of Pandit Seu 1720–30) was begun by artists from Guler 1770–75 just after the other two great manuscripts, the Gitagovinda and the Bhagavata Purana.

These three great series are widely attributed to various sons of Manaku and Nainsukh at this time.The Ramayana was prepared in two campaigns. Our painting belongs to the second campaign and involves Books V and VI, the Sundara and Yuddha-kandas, which were completed somewhat later, and apparently over a longer period 1790–1810. The series is widely dispersed. For other folios from this second part of the series, for which some drawings are also known, see Mittal and Seyller 2014, pp. 283–284; Britschgi and Fischer 2008, nos. 54 (a drawing), 56, 58 and 78; Goswamy and Fischer 2011, figs. 14–15; and Valmiki 2011, vols. iv-vi, passim.

Provenance

Private collection, Germany; acquired by the previous owner’s mother from a dealer in
Brussels in the early 1970s.

Literature

Britschgi, J., and Fischer, E., Rama und Sita: Das Ramayana in der Malerei Indiens, Museum Rietberg, Zurich, 2008
Goswamy, B.N. and Fischer, E., ‘The First Generation after Manaku and Nainsukh of Guler’ in Beach, M.C., Fischer, E., and Goswamy, B.N. (eds.), Masters of Indian Painting, 1100–1900, Artibus Asiae, Zurich, 2011, pp. 687–718
Seyller, J., and Mittal, J., Pahari Paintings in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art, Hyderabad, 2014
Valmiki, Ramayana illustre par les miniatures indiennes du XVIe au XIXe siecle, Editions Diane de Selliers, Paris, 2011