Krishna of Indian painting now emerges.

[Footnote 64: Plate 28.]

[Footnote 65: Note 21.]




VI


THE KRISHNA OF PAINTING

Indian pictures of Krishna confront us with a series of difficult
problems. The most exalted expressions of the theme are mainly from
Kangra, a large Hindu state within the Punjab Hills.[66] It was here that
Krishna, the cowherd lover, was most fully celebrated. Pictures were
produced in large numbers and the Kangra style with its delicate
refinement exactly mirrored the enraptured poetry of the later cult. This
painting was due entirely to a particular Kangra ruler, Raja Sansar Chand
(1775-1823)--his delight in painting causing him to spare no cost in
re-creating the Krishna idyll in exquisite terms. Elsewhere, however,
conditions varied. At the end of the sixteenth century, it was not a Hindu
but a Muslim ruler who commissioned the greatest illustrations of the
story. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Hindu patrons were the
rule but in certain states it was junior members of the ruling family
rather than the Raja himself who worshipped Krishna. Sometimes it was not
the ruling family but members of the merchant community who sponsored the
artists and, occasionally, it was even a pious lady or devout princess who