Krishna and His Friends Celebrate Holi in the Forests of Vrindavan (Primary Title)
Unknown (Artist)
This extraordinary painting depicts the youthful Krishna and his friends, the cowherds and cow maidens, celebrating Holi in the forests of Vrindavan. During this spring festival, the rigid social rules of traditional Hindu society are temporarily suspended. Raucous merriment—including dancing, spraying people with colored water, and even cross-dressing—are the order of the day. Krishna’s revelries are presented as a continuous narrative—the blue-skinned deity appearing again and again—set along the banks of the Yamuna River. These vignettes illustrate much of the poem written at the top of the page. The painter seems to ascribe the verses’ authorship to the blind 16th-century poet and singer Surdas, portrayed on the terrace of a small pavilion near the picture’s bottom right corner. The poem itself, however, mentions someone named Gang, perhaps the renowned poet of that name known who worked at the Mughal court during the same period.
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