King Dushyant in his Court

The first leaf of the series painted on Kalidasa’s Abhijnanam Shakuntalam depicts the king of Hastinapur, Dusyanta, enthroned. Painted on the throne are 32 women - a reference to the throne of the ancient Emperor Vikramaditya who is believed to have sat on a mythical golden throne embedded with statues of 32 beautiful celestial maidens called the apsaras. The magical throne endowed the seated monarch the ability to become a paragon of justice. Not everyone could sit on it however, and only the most exemplar of kings graced with exceptional qualities of kingship - selflessness, righteousness, honesty and courage were eligible to sit on the throne. In case an unworthy king attempted to sit on the magical throne, the apsaras on the throne would fly away.

The depiction of King Dushyant shown seated on a throne mimicking the mythical seat of King Vikramaditya therefore posits Dushyant as embodied with virtues of an ideal king.

The folio visually articulates two events simultaneously. After summarising the court of King Dushyant with its splendour, and alluding to his kingly qualities, the artist depicts in the foreground the king rendered in a smaller scale seated on a chariot pursuing a deer.

The original play interestingly does not include a scene with the court of Dushyant but starts with the narrative of the king engaged in a deer hunt. Here, however, the artist emphasises the durbar scene with many of the courtiers depicted with such individualistic characteristics that it would be surprising if many of them were not copied from existing portraits of real men clubbed together using existing stencils or charbas, as suggested by the differing scales of the figures painted.

The folio was painted in Nalagarh, a small hill state in the Punjab Hills. The style of painting at Nalagarh was influenced by its larger neighbour Kangra, and the royal families of the two states were joined together by martial ties. After the annexation of the Kangra State by the Sikh ruler Raja Ranjit Singh, many of the artists employed in the royal atelier of Kangra migrated out looking for greener pastures, and some found employment at Nalagarh.

The style during this period evolved from the Kangra style of the early nineteenth century, employing garish colour, and is marked by a certain mechanical stiffness in the rendering of the figures.

During this period all hill states saw the domination of the Sikhs in the political and social milieu, and Nalagarh was no exception. Sikh influence is visible here with some of the courtiers depicted incorporating Sikh style of dress and turban along with wearing untrimmed and uncut beards after the Sikh fashion.