A prince and a holy man

Meetings between royal persons and holy men, depictions of which are found throughout Indian religious and literary texts, were also popular subjects for paintings. Several of these texts followed a format wherein a prince or king approached a learned holy man for spiritual advice. The advice was often imparted in the form of a series of instructive tales. In many texts, kings sought assistance in various matters from famed holy men, an indication of the equal or greater powers attached to religious figures in India. Under the Mughal dynasty especially, many such literary works—related to both Islam and Hinduism—were illustrated. This page, from an as-yet-unidentified Hindu manuscript, depicts a prince in the left panel and a bearded sage in the right.