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Indian painting shows Ravana appearing as hermit and then abducting Sita

About this photograph

Creator
Margery H. Freeman
Date created
Unknown
Location
India
License
This photograph copyright ©2006. Terms of use

See this photograph in context

  • The Ramayana: The Hindu epic The Ramayana is retold through the mural, painting, and dance of Southeast Asia. (Page 2.9)

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Indian painting shows Ravana appearing as hermit and then abducting Sita

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This Indian painting shows Ravana at left posing as an elderly hermit with Sita and then, at right, abducting her in his chariot.

Sita is depicted wearing an orange Indian sari and she stands outside a very modest thatch dwelling near two ceramic pots. The hermit wears a white loincloth with turban and he carries a long walking stick in his right hand. Note that the Indian Sita is depicted as living in the forest in far less luxury than the Thai Sita as portrayed in temple murals.

Like the Thai temple murals, the Indian painting (whose artistic conventions likely developed first) shows Ravana first luring Sita in a white hermit disguise and then returning to his original mult-headed form and kidnapping her by force.

Here we see a ten-headed, bearded Ravana gripping Sita as she leans out of the back of his chariot. A plump prancing horse pulls Ravana’s chariot, which is driven by a yellow-skinned demon holding a whip over his head in his left hand.