Rama and Lakshmana Battling Against Kumbhakarana

This miniature, a folio illustrating an event from the Rama-katha – the story of Rama’s life, of which the earliest source is the Ramayana, the world-wide celebrated Sanskrit epic by sage Valmiki, datable to about sixth century B.C., portrays Rama and Lakshmana with Vibhishana and others engaged in war against Kumbhakarana, Ravana’s younger brother. A myth or reality, or merely the creation of imaginative mind which the parameters of an epic requiring assimilation of all kinds of emotions – ‘Rasas’ in the terminology of Indian poetics, mandated, Kumbhakarana had a body-size as large as a huge mountain. The tales of such relative body-sizes, Giants and Lilliputians, are found in all traditions of ancient world literature. Different from the act that these figures performed, or the emotion that such act generated, their body-sizes delighted the mind with their strangeness and evoked humour, something essentially epical in kind, for, not a deformity or shortcoming, nature’s strangeness inspired it. It is not in an act or in a dialogue, the real drama and its climax reveal in the appearance of such figures.

Though rendered in narrative style as if seeking to illustrate an event having different stages, the portrayal of the enormous bulk of Kumbhakarana’s figure is apparently the focal point of the painting. Kumbhakarana’s two figures, one, leftwards moving, and other, rightwards, reveal progression, and along with are painted some minor acts too : mounted on a terrace for gaining some height and reach his breast-level, an attendant, extending to Kumbhakarana a tray with rice, or a monkey, jumping on his shoulders ascending a roof for the required height, but not any such act, it is the volume of his body that captivates the eye. This enormity of his form is not merely in contrast to human figures like Rama and Lakshmana, or those of the monkeys, but also in relation to those inhabiting Ravana’s palace in Lanka. Not in arms, none of which he is carrying, it is in the bulk of his body that Kumbhakarana’s might, valour and ability to assault and destroy his enemy lies.

A horizontal folio, it stands divided into two parts, two-third, towards the right, and one-third, towards the left. On the left, Kumbhakarana, summoned by his brother Ravana, is seen heading towards Ravana’s palace. One of the monkeys, laying seize of the Ravana’s palace, attacks him and bites his nose, while others, he is crushing under his feet. As the Ramayana describes, Kumbhakarana used to consume hordes of animals, buckets of blood and hundreds of barrels of liquor as his one time diet. Lest he destroyed all animals and food, Brahma ordained that he would sleep at least for six months at one stretch, get up for a day and then again go to sleep.

In the course of the war Rama one day defeated Ravana but spared his life and sent him back so that realising his error he repented, something not in Ravana’s nature. Instead of, in the course of re-arraying his forces he summoned Kumbhakarana who was sleeping for last nine months. When no device to wake him worked, elephants were let loose over his body, and then he rose. Hunger-stricken as he was, immediately after he got up, he required food to eat. The rice in the tray, which an attendant on a terrace holds, is symbolic of the food served to him after he got up. The terrace, opposite the Ravana’s gate, is symbolic of Kumbhakarana’s palace.

Kumbhakarana’s figure on the right illustrates his emergence in the battlefield after seeking instructions from his brother Ravana. With his crane like huge hands he catches hold of innumerable monkey-warriors holding some of them under his arm-pits, others in hands, and crushes many more under his feet. A few of them he gulps into his mouth. However, the monkeys keep up their resistance, some hurling at him pieces of rocks, and others, trees and tree-branches. Though he gets killed at the hands of Rama, the arrows that they shoot at him fall on the earth, blunted and broken. Rama is accompanied by Lakshmana, Vibhishana, Jamvan, Sugriva, Hanuman, and Angad among others.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.

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