Dharma Sastha in Yogic Repose

The Lord of Sabarimala is painted here in his most familiar attitude — seated with both knees drawn up and bound by the yogapattam, the cloth band that holds a meditating body still through a long night of practice. It is a posture of arrested motion: the hunter-king at rest, the ascetic and the sovereign in the same figure.

The right hand rises in chin mudra, thumb and forefinger closed into the circle of knowledge; the left rests open along the band. The complexion is built in the mural manner, warm ochre stippled over ivory, so the modelling of the chest and the fold of the arms emerges without a single blended edge.

Ornament carries the picture's weight. A tall conical crown, long ear discs, layered bead and pearl garlands falling to the ankles, armlets and anklets in gold — each drawn with the fine white dot work that catches the sanctum lamp in a real temple. Two rosettes of pink and white flowers flank the pedestal, and the lotus plinth beneath is ruled in careful gold petals.

Behind him the ground is a flat deep saffron, stippled to keep it alive, with a full golden halo ringed in a beaded white line. Two hanging brass lamps descend from the upper corners on their chains, placing the figure inside a shrine rather than an open field.

Framed in plain black, the painting keeps the frontality of an icon: nothing turns, nothing narrates, and the eye is met directly the moment you stand in front of it.