PLATE 22
Krishna dancing with the Cowgirls
Illustration to the Gita Govinda
Western Rajasthan, c. 1610
N.C. Mehta collection, Bombay
Besides describing Krishna's flute-playing, Radha's friend gives her an account of his love-making.
'An artless woman looks with ardour on Krishna's lotus face.'
'Another on the bank of the Jumna, when Krishna goes to a bamboo thicket,
Pulls at his garment to draw him back, so eager is she for amorous play.'
'Krishna praises another woman, lost with him in the dance of love,
The dance where the sweet low flute is heard in the clamour of bangles on hands that clap. He embraces one woman, he kisses another, and fondles another beautiful one.'
'Krishna here disports himself with charming women given to love.'
The present picture illustrates phases of this glamorous love-making—Krishna embracing one woman, dancing with another and conversing with a third. The background is a diagram of the forest as it might appear in spring—the slack looseness of treatment befitting the freedom of conduct adumbrated by the verse. The large insects hovering in the branches are the black bees of Indian love-poetry whose quest for flowers was regarded as symbolic of urgent lovers pestering their mistresses. In style the picture illustrates the Jain painting of Western India after its early angular rigidity had been softened by application to tender and more romantic themes.