Desavarati Ragini

Desavarati ragini is embodied as a woman who arches her back while raising her arms over head. The posture, which Molly Emma Aitken has identified as India's "aesthetic icon of the perfectly beautiful woman...." is first seen on the gateways of the Buddhist stupa at Sanchi (1st century BCE) and subsequently and ubiquitously on temples, textiles, ivories and paintings signifying auspiciousness and divine blessings.

Raga (Sanskrit, color or passion) is the term for a classical music mode, a set framework for improvisation. Having originated in the first millennium, ragas were systematized and classified during the thirteenth through sixteenth century into ragamalas, meaning garlands of musical modes. A common system recognized six raga husbands, each "married" to five ragini wives for a total of thirty-six "families." Families of musical modes sometimes included sons or ragaputras as well. By the fifteenth century, ragas had become associated with specific moods, times, seasons, affective properties, deities, lovers, and heroes. Around 1590-1620, illustrated ragamala series became a favorite subject for Rajput patrons, as well as for some Mughals, such as Abd-ur Rahim, patron of the Freer Ramayana and the Laud Ragamala. Specific iconographies were developed for depicting each mode. These formulae lent themselves to variations, which were sometimes dependent on region.