Asavari Ragini

A raga is a traditional Hindu musical form. This page (and Museum no. IS.39-1953) comes from a ragamala ('garland of ragas'), a set of paintings in which each raga is represented by a scene or person. Here, Asavari ragini is depicted as a tribal woman in a peacock-feather skirt feeding flowers to a snake in a rocky landscape. The colophon of the set (not in the V&A collection) states that it was painted by the artist Nasiruddin at Chawand in the year 1605. A colophon is a short text at the end of a set of paintings that gives the date and place where it was completed. Chawand was the capital of the Rajput kingdom of Mewar before the foundation of Udaipur. This set of paintings is the earliest dated Rajasthani ragamala and is therefore an important milestone in the history of Rajasthani painting.