- Title
- Desavarari Ragini, Fourth Wife of Dipak Raga, Folio from a Ragamala (Garland of Melodies)
- Date Made
- circa 1670
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 8 3/16 x 6 3/8 in. (20.8 x 16.19 cm); Image: 7 5/8 x 6 1/4 in. (19.37 x 15.88 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.71.1.20
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
The devanagari inscription (bottom left of the folio, not visible in photo) identifies Desavarari Ragini by the alternate spelling of “Desavari Ragani.” It is the fourth wife of Dipak Raga in the variant ragamala (garland of melodies) classification system followed in the princely state of Sirohi, Rajasthan. This is corroborated by the inscribed series number twenty-three (bottom right of folio, not visible in photo), which corresponds to Desavarari Ragini’s sequence in the Sirohi system. Desavarari Ragini is typically depicted as a woman with her torso twisted and her arms upraised and joined together. For example, see a Desavarari Ragini from Marwar (?) in the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington (S2018.1.52). Here, in accordance with the Sirohi system, the melody is personified as a heroine receiving betel nut quids (pan) from her maidservant to offer them to her lover, who has just arrived on his caparisoned horse shown waiting outside the pavilion. This alternative imagery resembles and is often labeled interchangeably with Bairadi Ragini, which is also the fourth wife of Dipak Raga in the predominant Rajasthani ragamala classification system. For example, see a Bairadi Ragini from Bikaner in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1981.464.1).
Additional folios from this dispersed series are in the British Museum, London (1958,1011,0.6) and Museum Rietberg, Zurich (RVI 802).
The folio has been rebacked by a late 19th-century Gujarati partial horoscope.
- Selected Bibliography
- Rosenfield, John. The Arts of India and Nepal: The Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1966.
