Angad, Rama’s Emissary in the Court of Ravana

After the abduction of Sita by Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, Rama decides to wage a war with the help of the simian army for her recovery.

Crossing over the wide ocean, Rama commands the monkey-generals to besiege the gates of Lanka, and the monkey army then spreads out, ‘astonishing’ in their gathering like a ‘swarm of locusts’ and seemed to filled out the “ air and the earth’, with even the “winds unable to penetrate Lanka being surrounded on all sides by heroic monkeys”.

In order to avoid the huge destruction and bloodshed that the impending war will cause, Rama sends Angada the monkey prince to Ravana as an emissary to his court to give him a chance to honourably return Sita back to Rama. Angada tries his best to convince Ravana, but in vain. Ravana commands his attendants to seize Angada. Shaking off the attendants who try to grab him, Angad jumps on the roof of Ravana's palace, crushing it with his immense strength and flies back to the encamping monkey army.

The artist depicts these unfolding events in a single folio. The gold-laden impenetrable fortress of the demon king stretches into the horizon on the left, with its interlocking golden palaces and pavilions, cupolas and turrets radiant in the sun. The oblique angle of depiction presents us with a view inside the palaces, revealing the formidable demons that guard it from within. On the top near the high walls of the fortress, a diminutive Angad is depicted as flying towards Ravana’s palace, his scarf billowing in the wind.

Below, the troops of the monkey army crouch near the ramparts eagerly awaiting orders for attack. Inside the palace, the ten-headed demon King Ravana holds court with an array of grotesque demons as his courtiers. Angad standing alone surrounded by menacing asuras, boldly confronts the enthroned Ravana. In the far right, Rama is depicted seated with his brother Lakshmana, surrounded by his simian companions, and Ravana's alienated brother Vibhishan. Angad bows reverently to Rama after having delivered the message to Ravana, and Rama blesses him on the accomplishment of his task.

Noticeable in the painting is the relatively comfortable handling of depth and distance, and the telescoping of the palaces with its interlinking planes and diagonals receding in the distance. The rendering of perspective, however does not diminish the artist’s propensity for intricate details. Even in the far distance, the artist painstakingly delineates the teeth of the grimacing monkeys, for instance, or renders the floral patterns of the carpet on which Ravana sits, or the details of the gold-studded porches of Ravana’s palace.