The Bhagavata Purana (Ancient Stories of the Lord) is traditionally ascribed to the legendary poet-sage Vyasa in the 8th-10th century CE. It stresses the path of devotion (bhakti) to Krishna, the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, the Hindu God of Preservation. To fulfill his role as the guardian of the world, Vishnu manifests as a succession of heroic animals and semi-mortal saviors, called avatars.
This folio from a dispersed Bhagavata Purana illustrates an episode when Krishna uprooted the twin Arjuna trees (Terminalia Arjuna), who were in reality Nalakuvara and Manigriva, the sons of Kubera, the god of wealth. While cavorting drunkenly and nakedly with young women in a garden on the bank of the Mandakini River in present-day Uttarakhand, the sons were spied upon by the sage Narada, who cursed them for their immorality and arrogance to become trees for 100 years. One day, at the end of their penance, Krishna’s foster-mother Yashoda had tied Krishna to a large mortar to punish the mischievous infant for stealing butter. Krishna, recognizing the trees’ true personalities, dragged the mortar between them and uprooted both, thereby releasing the sons who then venerate their divine savior (Bhagavata Purana 10:10).
Folios from comparable Orissan Bhagavata Purana series are in the Brooklyn Museum (75.203.3, 1990.185.1, 1993.199), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1974.147 and 1975.409.4), San Diego Museum of Art (1990.232), and Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.19-1986).