Hindola Raga (c. 1790–1800): Art, History and Details

Hindola Raga (c. 1790–1800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

To celebrate the coming of spring, Krishna sits on a swing with his beloved Radha as their companions, the cowherd boys and milkmaids, play music, dance, admire the idyllic couple, and keep their swing gently in motion. In Sanskrit, hindola means swing, and this painting belonged to a set of ragas, which are paintings associated with a musical mode. Music played in the Hindola Raga elicits the fever of young love in springtime. Radha and Krishna represent the ideal of a young couple in love.

Object facts

• Title: Hindola Raga
• Date: c. 1790–1800
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 20.5 x 15.3 cm (8 1/16 x 6 in.); with mat: 35.5 x 25.4 cm (14 x 10 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1975.9

A detail from the museum

The word hindola means "swing" in Sanskrit.

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1975.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 63, no. 2 (February 1976): 31–71.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Czuma, Stanislaw J., "Eternal Rhythms", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 36 no. 08, October 1996

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.