same kind of transformation. Vasanta Ragini, ’the music of springtime,’ was normally apostrophized as a lovely lady, yet because springtime suggested lovers, she was shown in painting as if she were Krishna dancing with a vase of flowers, holding a wand in his hand or celebrating the spring fertility festival.  The mode, Pancham Ragini, was also feminine in character and was conceived of as a beauty enjoying her lover’s advances.  The lady herself was portrayed, yet once again Krishna was introduced, this time as her lover.  In all these cases the celebration of Krishna was incidental to the main theme and only in one instance—­a Malwa Rasika Priya—­is there a trace of undisguised adoration.  In this lovely series,[86] Krishna’s enchantment is perfectly suggested by the flowering trees which wave above him, the style acquiring an even more intense lyricism on account of its divine subject.

During the eighteenth century, painting in Rajasthan became increasingly secular, even artists of Udaipur devoting themselves almost exclusively to scenes of court life.  The Ranas and the Mewar nobility were depicted hunting in the local landscape, watching elephant fights or moving in procession.  Similar fashions prevailed in Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Bundi and Kotah.  Only, in fact, in two Rajasthan States and then for only brief periods was there any major celebration of the Krishna theme.  At Kishangarh, a small State midway between Ajmer and Jaipur, a series of intensely poetic paintings were produced between the years 1750 and 1760—­the prime stimulus being the delight of Raja Sawant Singh in Krishna’s romance.[87] Born in 1699, Sawant Singh had ascended the throne in 1748 and given all his time to three activities, the rapturous re-living of Krishna’s romance with Radha, the composition of ecstatic poems and the daily worship of Krishna as lover god.  So great was his devotion that in 1757 he abandoned the throne and taking with him his favourite maid of honour, the beautiful poetess, Bani Thani, retired to Brindaban where he died in 1764.  Sawant Singh’s delight seems to have been shared by a local artist, Nihal Chand, for under the Raja’s direction he produced a number of pictures in which Radha and Krishna sustained the leading roles.  The pictures were mainly illustrations of Sawant Singh’s own poems—­the lovers being portrayed at moments of blissful wonder, drifting on a lake in a scarlet boat, watching fireworks cascading down the sky or gently dallying in a marble pavilion.

  Here is Love’s enchanted zone
  Here Time and the Firmament stand still
  Here the Bride and Bridegroom
  Never can grow old. 
  Here the fountains never cease to play
  And the night is ever young.[88]