Krishna Vishvarupa

The Bhagavad Gita (200 BCE-300 CE) is one of Hinduism's most sacred texts, and Krishna's manifestation as the cosmos is its profound core. The text presents a spectrum of doctrines and practices within a framework of personal devotion (bhakti) to Krishna. The eleventh chapter describes Krishna in his infinite cosmic form, vishvarupa, which encompasses all of time and "the whole world, moving and unmoving," filling "all the horizons," and "brushing the sky."

An eighteenth-century artist from the kingdom of Bilaspur, in the Punjab Hills, sought to evoke the limitless and proliferating universe by extending Krishna's sixty multicolored heads and forty-four pinwheeling arms to the very borders of the painting. Within the golden dhoti that wraps around his waist, a miniaturized mountain landscape conveys--through the juxtaposition of scale--both Krishna's vastness and his supremacy over all other Hindu gods and sages. Four of Krishna's heads, shaded the same lavender-blue as his body, are vertically stacked at the center of his body, and his lowest mouth is "spiky with fangs." The heads probably relate to the god's successive manifestations before his devotee Arjuna, the warrior prince who appears at the painting's lower left, his hands raised in the gesture of worship. As the hair on Arjuna's arms bristles in terror, Krishna abandons his human form and becomes the cosmic creator, universal sovereign, and Kala, who is both time and death.

In the Gita, Krishna's form, which embodies all of time and all phenomena, is overwhelming and terrifying. With its delicate line, luscious sherbet colors, and especially Krishna's gentle expressions as he meets the gaze of his devotees, the painting transcends literal illustration of the Gita's eleventh chapter to convey the broader context of bhakti devotion, in which Krishna's compassion is accessible to all.