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Updated: May 21, 2025
Until the second half of the seventeenth century this stretch of country bordering the Western Himalayas seems to have had no kind of painting whatsoever. In 1678, however, Raja Kirpal Pal inherited the tiny state of Basohli and almost immediately a new artistic urge became apparent.
We must assume, in fact, a series of influences determined to a great extent by Raja Kirpal Pal's political contacts, his private journeys and individual taste, but perhaps above all by an urge to express his feelings for Krishna in a novel and personal manner. The result is not only a new style but a special choice of subject-matter.
And although exact historical proof is still wanting, the most likely explanation is that under Rana Raj Singh some Udaipur artists were persuaded to migrate to Basohli. We know that Rajput rulers in the Punjab Hills were often connected by marriage with Rajput families in Rajasthan and it is therefore possible that during a visit to Udaipur, Raja Kirpal Pal recruited his atelier.
None the less, in producing their illustrations, the artists made Krishna the central figure and we can only conclude that eschewing the obvious Rasika Priya, Raja Kirpal Pal had directed his artists to do for Sanskrit what Keshav Das had done for Hindi poetry to celebrate Krishna as the most varied and skilled of lovers and as a corollary show him in a whole variety of romantic and poetic situations.
Their greatest achievements, however, were two versions of Bhanu Datta's Rasamanjari, one of them completed in 1695, shortly after Raja Kirpal Pal's death, the other almost certainly fifteen years earlier.
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