A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s5.19

c15.s5.19

Vol. xxxv includes a good example of the subject of a lady (*Mālkōs Rāg* 2nd) offering worship (*pūjā*) to a four-headed image of Brahmā, which recurs in vol. xli, where it is treated by Gobind Singh. The almost identical subject, in which a *lingam*, the symbol of Mahādēo, is substituted for the four-headed image, which also is probably a *Rāginī* picture, has been painted charmingly by several artists. The best example that I have seen is a picture (Johnson Coll., vol. l, fol. 1) by Rāi Fath Chand, which depicts a princess, attended by four women, doing reverence to a *lingam* standing on a marble platform in a palace garden. The same motive is prettily rendered in Haughton's engraving from an unknown original in Moor, *Hindu Pantheon*, Pl. XXII, which excited the warm admiration of Prof. Albrecht Weber.² Unfortunately, the engraver allowed himself to take some liberties, and his work cannot be accepted as a perfectly faithful transcript.