Raja Medini Pal of Basohli (r. 1722-1736) in present-day Himachal Pradesh was born in 1714. At the age of eight in 1722 he succeeded his father, Raja Dhiraj Pal (r. circa 1690-1720), and ruled under the regency of his uncle Mian Ratan Pal and the vizier Harkha. In 1730 he married a daughter of Raja Dalip Singh of Guler (r. 1695-1741). He died at age twenty-two in 1736.
In this painting from circa 1730, a beardless Medini Pal seated on a carpet is presented with a tethered falcon by a falconer. He holds the falcon on an embroidered falconer’s glove worn on his left hand. Another falcon is partially concealed in his gloveless right hand. Medini Pal has a red turban with a feather plume, a hoop earring with two pearls and a ruby, a gold choker with a ruby pendant, and a gold necklace with the idiosyncratic quatrefoil-shaped pendant worn by Basohli rulers for royal identification and proclamatory purposes. He wears a white coat (jama) with floral sprays and a red brocade waist sash. He has Shaiva sectarian markings on his forehead. A second falconer stands on the right side of the painting, while on left side is an attendant holding a sword in a cloth bag and an embroidered handkerchief.
A comparable Mankot portrait of a beardless Medini Pal attributed to circa 1730 is in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich (RVI 1205). A similar Basohli portrait of a bearded Medini Pal attributed to circa 1735, the year before he died, is in a private collection (see William Archer, 1973, 2:34 Basohli 19).
