The Monkeys and Bears Fight Ravana and His Demons (verso), from a Romance of Chandrabhanu and Lavanyavati of Upendra Bhanja (Indian, died 1740) (late 1700s): Art, History and Details

The Monkeys and Bears Fight Ravana and His Demons (verso), from a Romance of Chandrabhanu and Lavanyavati of Upendra Bhanja (Indian, died 1740) (late 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This leaf from an 18th-century romance manuscript comes from a section of the book that retells the epic battle between the demon Ravana and the god-hero Rama. The 10-headed multiarmed demon Ravana is the second figure from the right. Rama’s army of monkeys and bears, wielding tree branches and clods of earth, fill the remainder of the leaf. The images were created using a stylus that incised into the palm leaf; charcoal was then rubbed over the leaf and wiped off, leaving only the incised areas in black.

Object facts

• Title: The Monkeys and Bears Fight Ravana and His Demons (verso), from a Romance of Chandrabhanu and Lavanyavati of Upendra Bhanja (Indian, died 1740)
• Date: late 1700s
• Culture: Eastern India, Odisha
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Charcoal on palm leaf
• Dimensions: Overall: 4.8 x 40.2 cm (1 7/8 x 15 13/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1979.21.b

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Leach, Linda York. Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1986.

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.