An emaciated female ascetic and Krishna in the guise of a wandering mendicant, personifying a musical mode, Setmalar Ragini

This painting belongs to a series known as a ragamala (garland of musical modes), a musical classification system in which the various modes are personified as men or women. The feminine musical mode (ragini) depicted here is known as Setmalar. She is easy to identify as she is often depicted as an emaciated female who has adopted the lower garment of a male ascetic. Like many of the women depicted in Indian poetic traditions and in paintings, she is imagined as a love-stricken woman pining away for an absent lover. Setmalar's renunciation is so extreme that her body and youthful features have wasted away. In imagining love to have such powerful physical effects, the Indian poets reveal a sensibility shared by their Persian counterparts. An interesting feature of the present painting is its juxtaposition of figures representing true and false asceticism. In the lower register is an ascetic arriving at a shrine and being greeted with honor. His colorful robe and corpulent figure provide a stark contrast to the frail figure of Setmalar and reveal the former's asceticism to be inauthentic.