A prince visiting a female ascetic,

early 18th century

Surrounded by richly dressed guests and lavish architecture, a female ascetic sits demurely in a plain gown and patchwork cloak. Her matted hair hangs down in long tresses and is smeared with ashes. Her knees are caught up in a yogapatta, or meditation band. She is clearly a Saiva devotee—she wears the sect’s mark on her forehead. Followers of Saivism, one of the four main Hindu sects, believe that the god Shiva is the supreme being. The ascetic receives a princely visitor, who sits next to her smoking a hookah. In front of this seated pair are several other figures, including a lady leaning on a swing with her hair fastened by a bandeau—a signifier of someone on the path to becoming a yogini, a powerful female ascetic. Female yogini were popular subjects in Deccan painting, one of the major schools of painting in the Islamic royal courts of central and south India.