The Sanskrit verse by the poet Kashyapa in the header reads:
Blown lotus petals in hand, creeper-like in bodily grace, and in her beauty gentle, —seated beneath the fruit tree, she is said to be Malashri.
Malashri Ragini is the third wife of Bhairava Raga in the predominant ragamala (garland of melodies) classification system generally known as the Rajasthani system. This is corroborated by the folio being inscribed as number four in the series, which corresponds to Malashri Ragini’s sequence in the Rajasthani system. It is a joyful melody associated with the late afternoon and Winter (November–January). It is personified as a heroine with a lotus who is pining for her lover. Here, a woman plucks lotus petals while being fanned by maidservant. She is conversing with a companion. The setting is a palace terrace beside an empty bedchamber. Fawns frolic in the foreground.
This folio is from a widely dispersed ragamala series painted in Chawand, Rajasthan, by the artist Nasiruddin (or Nisaradi, active 1585–1609) in 1605. It is the earliest dated Rajasthani ragamala. Chawand was the capital of Mewar from 1606 to 1620 under Maharana Amar Singh I (r. 1597–1620). Additional folios from the series are in the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Benares Hindu University, Varanasi (7460), British Museum, London (1978,0417,0.3), Cleveland Museum of Art (2018.136), Museum Rietberg, Zurich (RVI 1786), San Diego Museum of Art (1990.587), and Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.38-1953 and IS.39-1953).
