Dushyant Leaving the Yajna Bhoomi After the Completing on Yajna

After the night-long ritual sacrifices performed by the sages are overseen by King Dushyant who ensured their fruitful completion, he now proceeds towards the forest. On the right, the sages, having completed their sacrificial rites, are still sitting there, waiting for the fires to extinguish completely. Vessels now empty of their ritual offerings lay scattered around. One sage, dressed with a leopard skin tied around his waist, stokes the dying amber flames with a forked branch of a tree, while another sage seeks the blessings of the gods upon the completion of the ritual sacrifices folding his hands in reverence.

In the distance, day has just dawned and the golden rays of the sun splatter across a striated red-grey sky, the warm red glow of the skies skillfully reflected in the winding waters of the stream running below, and a reddish glow lights up the leaves of trees rendered on the top and the left. The creatures of the forest rise up to greet a new day - the slumbering cow seems to have just woken up, and is stirring to raise itself. Flocks of birds peck at the grains scattered on the ground for them, while a little white bird swoops down to join them.

Oblivious of the dawning of a new day or of the setting of the night, the hermit in the cave in the lower right continues with his austere penances, deep in meditation, while the little fire warming him through the night has died into a soft amber glow.

The artist keeps the same composition of the forest and the hermitage with its undulating hillocks and the enclosed huts of the hermitage set among lush grove of trees rendered across various narrative scenes of the painted manuscript. The uniformity, however, is animated with subtle variations, in depicting the time of the day, for instance, or the movement of the animals or the people within the composition. These subtle changes set against a broad painted landscape, render it akin to a theatrical performance and a stage set.