painting, however, can hardly have been the only source for even in its earliest examples Basohli painting has a smooth polish, a savage sophistication and a command of shading which suggests the influence of the Mughal style of Delhi.  We must assume, in fact, a series of influences determined to a great extent by Raja Kirpal Pal’s political contacts, his private journeys and individual taste, but perhaps above all by an urge to express his feelings for Krishna in a novel and personal manner.  The result is not only a new style but a special choice of subject-matter.  The Rasika Priya and the Bhagavata Purana, the texts so greatly favoured at Udaipur, were discarded and in their place Basohli artists produced a series of isolated scenes from Krishna’s life—­the child Krishna stealing butter,[94] Krishna the gallant robbing the cowgirls or exacting toll, Krishna extinguishing the forest-fire,[95] Krishna the violent lover devouring Radha with hungry eyes.  Their greatest achievements, however, were two versions of Bhanu Datta’s Rasamanjari, one of them completed in 1695,[96] shortly after Raja Kirpal Pal’s death, the other almost certainly fifteen years earlier.[97] The text in question is a treatise on poetics illustrating how romantic situations should best be treated in Sanskrit poetry—­the conduct of mature mistresses, experienced lovers, sly go-betweens, clowns or jokers being all subjected to analysis.[98] The subject of the text is secular romantic poetry and Krishna himself is never mentioned.  None the less, in producing their illustrations, the artists made Krishna the central figure and we can only conclude that eschewing the obvious Rasika Priya, Raja Kirpal Pal had directed his artists to do for Sanskrit what Keshav Das had done for Hindi poetry—­to celebrate Krishna as the most varied and skilled of lovers and as a corollary show him in a whole variety of romantic and poetic situations.  As a result Krishna was portrayed in a number of highly conflicting roles—­as husband, rake, seducer, paramour and gallant.

In one picture he is ‘a gallant whose word cannot be trusted’ and we see him in the act of delicately disengaging a lady’s dress and gazing at her with passion-haunted eyes.  The poem on the reverse runs as follows: 

  Showing her a beautiful girdle
  Drawing on a fair panel with red chalk
  Putting a bracelet on her wrists
  And laying a necklace on her breasts
  Winning the confidence of the fawn-eyed lady of fair brows
  He slyly loosens the knot of her skirt
  Below the girdle-stead, with naughty hand.[99]

In another picture, he appears as ’a gallant well versed in the ways of courtesans,’ the dreaded seducer of inexperienced girls.  He is now shown approaching a formal pavilion, set in a lonely field.  Inside the pavilion is the lovely object of his attack, sitting with a companion, knowing that willy-nilly she must shortly yield yet timidly making show of maidenly reserve.