Shabri paying homage to Rama and welcoming him with fruit

Leaf from the Shangri Ramayana (Aranya Khanda)

The folio depicts the aged ascetic Shabri reverently bowing and paying homage to Rama. According to Valmiki Ramayana, Shabri, an old ascetic is described as a flawless yogin with perfect meditative concentration, who desires to attain salvation. Shabri patiently waits for several years for the arrival of Rama, an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu, to her hermitage, as was foretold by her guru, sage Matanga before he left for his heavenly abode. Sage Matanga had prophesied that Shabri would attain salvation after Rama would grace her abode with his presence. Upon their arrival, Shabri offers with utmost devotion Rama and Lakshmana fruits that she has gleaned from various trees of the forest.

Shabri expresses her desire to depart to the heavenly spheres where her teachers reside upon their death. Rama gives consent to it, upon which she offers herself into fire and ascends heaven, emancipated from mortality.

The narrative in Ramayana describes the dwelling of Shabri amidst a beautiful thick forest teeming with birds and animals. In the painted folio, the artist condenses the scene into a minimal landscape depicting two trees that serves as a backdrop for the forest. Shabri, wizened and old, bends down touching Rama’s feet with moving humility. The artist has admirably depicted the frailty of old ascetic, with her arched back bent with age, wrinkles lining her face and eyes, neck, arms and stomach, with delicate line work. Exquisite line work also emphasises her greying hair and eyebrows, the decorative rendering of the jewellery that Rama and Lakshmana wear, the gold spangled ornamentation on their bows and quivers, as well as in the tufts of grass in foreground and the dainty leaves on the tree behind the hut.

In the folio the artist seems to struggle between depicting a naturalistic rendering of the human figures as well as maintaining a spiritual hierarchy between Rama and Shabri, who would gain salvation due to Rama’s blessings. To achieve this balance the artist attempts to place Shabri on a lower plane, while Rama along with his brother Lakshmana behind him are placed on a slightly higher plane; the two figures seem to be floating on air. By a quirk in the artist’s rendering of the scene, the tree trunk grows in a plane lower than Rama and Lakshmana, but their flowing wraps, bow, sword and quiver of arrows are depicted as flowing in front of the tree, generating an uncertainty in the planes that they stand in.