Shakuntala and Her Friends Approach Sage Kanva for His Blessings

The artist depicts Shakuntala attired in bridal finery being led by her friends Priyamvada and Anasuya and her foster mother Gautami, who ask her to greet her foster father sage Kanva and bid him farewell.

Shakuntala, overwhelmed by feelings of agony upon her separation from her foster father, however, is reluctant to face him, and averts her gaze from sage Kanva. He too turns his gaze away, as if unable to bear the sight of Shakuntala who is soon to leave for king Dushyant’s palace at Hastinapur.

The artist depicts Shakuntala’s hesitation, as she half turns to see her foster father, who stares ahead pensively, his one hand fingering a rosary distractedly, while the other clasped at his knee for support. He is seated on a deer skin with his kamandala, a water vessel used by ascetics and a scriptural text bound in red cloth kept in front of him. Her women companions hold and lead her in an attempt to steer her towards the aged sage.

The scene of the hesitant farewell is set in front of Kanva’s little hut snuggled amidst a charming variety of trees that shelter it. A little open porch where the figures are set in is bounded by a pile of boulders that mark its periphery and set it away from the woods beyond. On the top and on the right, trees untamed by the hermitage pan out over the undulating slopes of the mountains - they loom large in the foreground while emerging as little outcrops in the far distance in the top right.

The artist gives us a distant view to the hermit's little abode, contrasting the neat, simple yet cosy and habitable environs to the wild, mysterious but somewhat threatening spaces of the expanse beyond. Within the boundary of the cottage, certain features mark it as inviting and hospitable - the little birds that peck at the grains scattered for them or trees that give fruit like the broad-leafed banana plantain shading the hut, or the lively warm colours used around the space that animate in contrast to the cool greens and blue-greens that largely are used to render the space beyond the little hut.