Kamasan Painting

Kamasan is the name of a village on the island of Bali that gave its name to a style of local textile painting that usually represents episodes from the great Hindu narratives, such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In this composition we see the image of Ravana, the demonic king of the ancient kingdom of Lanka (now Sri Lanka), who kidnaps Sita, the beloved of the divine prince Rama, in the epic Ramayana, meditating to obtain power (centre figure). In the upper section, the image shows five gods (from left to right): Shiva, Indra, Yama, Kubera and Baruna. Bali remains mostly Hindu in the mostly Islamic context of the Indonesian archipelago.