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Painting
Prusti, Raghunath - Enlarge image
Painting
- Place of origin:
Orissa, India (south, made)
- Date:
circa 1880 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Prusti, Raghunath (maker)
- Materials and Techniques:
Palm leaf, incised and coloured
- Museum number:
IS.157-1993
- Gallery location:
In Storage
This folio is a fine example of illustrated manuscript art from Orissa, eastern India. With the text incised on palm-leaf, it illustrates scenes from an Oriyan poem, the ‘Lavannyavati’. A colophon indicates that this edition was created for the Subudhi family, who were Orissan merchants.
The scene here depicts a woman devotee taking ‘darsana’ before the linga ([phallic symbol of Shiva) in a temple sanctuary, freshly decorated with flowers. A sculpture of Nandi faces the sanctuary, which is surmounted by a tapering tower (‘sikhara’) in the Orissan style of medieval temple architecture.
The oldest manuscripts produced in India were written or incised on birch-bark or palm-leaf. Long after paper became available, palm-leaf continued to be used for religious texts, especially in southern India. Indeed, paper manuscripts often followed the ‘landscape’ format of the palm-leaf rather than the vertical ‘codex’ form. Texts were either written directly onto the treated palm-leaf in ink, or incised with a metal stylus. They were highlighted by a soot solution rubbed into the incised surface.
