Observe the image and answer the following question.
This Mewar folio of 1550 shows Krishna and gopis in the forest. Which text does it illustrate?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Gita Govinda
Option (1) Rasamanjari — Incorrect. Rasamanjari is the Sanskrit treatise on rasa by Bhanu Datta. Krishna is not named in it, though painters brought him in as the archetypal lover. The caption of this Mewar folio names the Gita Govinda instead.
Option (2) Rasikapriya — Incorrect. Rasikapriya is the Brajbhasha text of Keshav Das, composed in 1591. It cannot be the text of a folio painted in 1550.
Option (3) Bhagvata Purana — Incorrect. Sahibdin painted a Bhagvata Purana at Mewar in 1648. This 1550 folio of Krishna and the gopis comes from the Gita Govinda, not the Bhagvata Purana.
Option (4) Gita Govinda — Correct. Krishna and gopis in the forest is a Mewar folio of 1550 from the Gita Govinda, Jayadeva’s Sanskrit poem on the love of Radha and Krishna.
NCERT (2026-27):
Krishna and gopis in the forest, Gita Govinda, Mewar, 1550, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai “Themes of Paintings – An Overview …Composed in the twelfth century by Jayadeva, who is believed to have been the court poet of Lakshmana Sen of Bengal, Gita Govinda, the ‘Song of the Cowherd’, is a lyrical poem in Sanskrit, evoking shringara rasa, portraying the mystical love between Radha and Krishna through worldly imageries.” |
