Durga riding a tiger in battle with demons, a page from a Devi Mahatmya series, Pahari, perhaps Guler, circa 1840, opaque pigments and gold on paper, the many-armed Goddess depicted riding her lion into battle against the one demon Sumbha, who is shown five times and coloured red to indicate the intensity of his anger after the Goddess has killed his brother Nisumbha, Sumbha aims his arrows at her from his chariot (his charioteer has fallen off and his horses collapsed), rushing at her with sword and shield, jumping upon her, grappling with her, and finally reeling away from her in the foreground, the scene is set against a lime green ground leading to a plain yellow background, 24.7 x 32.8 cmProvenance: Acquired at Maggs Bros., London, 1972The Devi Mahatmya, a hymn extolling the demon slaying prowess of the Great Goddess (see Coburn in Dehejia 1999), was one of the most popular series executed in Guler in the later 18th century. Goswamy and Fischer (2011) distinguish the various series of the Guler Devi Mahatmyas but date them all to the period 1780-1800. Earliest they think dated to c. 1780 is a dispersed series with plain or uncoloured borders now widely dispersed that seems never to have been finished since it lacks detailing in gold. A series divided between the Lahore Museum (Aijazuddin 1977, Guler 41) and Chandigarh Museum (not fully published) and dated 1781 provides a key to the dating and iconography of the different series of Devi Mahatmyas. There are of course many other later series, such as the one that ours comes from, but they almost all follow the same iconography more or less exactly. For the Lahore Museum version of this composition, see Aijazuddin 1977, no. 41(xxxvii).Since the sets obviously follow the same prototype, there is no reason to think that they were all done in Guler, but rather formed part of the common inheritance of the sons and grandsons of Manaku and Nainsukh as they spread themselves round the various states of the Punjab Hills.BibliographyAijazuddin, F. S., Pahari Paintings and Sikh Portraits in the Lahore Museum, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1977Dehejia, V., Devi the Great Goddess: Female Divinity in South Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 1999Goswamy, B.N., and Fischer, E., ‘The First Generation after Manaku and Nainsukh of Guler’ in Beach, M.C., Fischer, E., and Goswamy, B.N., Masters of Indian Painting, Artibus Asiae, Zurich, 2011, pp. 687-718Please refer to department for condition report