Art Print – Krishna Yoga Nidra

Provenance

'Krishna Yoga Nidra' shows Krishna asleep on the primordial ocean, in the reclining form Indian art gives to Vishnu as Narayana. Krishna is counted among Vishnu's avatars and, in Vaishnava tradition, revered as the source of all existence, so the sleeper at the edge of creation is his. The sleep is not absence. It is yoga nidra, a sleep of gathered awareness, and the image is often read as the god dreaming the universe into being.

The blue-skinned Krishna lies garlanded in white flowers and a golden-yellow dhoti, a halo behind his head, on the coils of the serpent Shesha, whose many hoods rise over him like a canopy. Shesha, also called Ananta, 'the endless', is traditionally associated with time. At his side sits the goddess Yoga Nidra, crowned and blue-skinned with long dark hair, a lotus in her hand: the power that holds Vishnu in sleep. From a long lotus stalk above them rises Brahma, four-armed and many-faced within a golden halo, the creator who is born from the lotus that grows from Vishnu's navel and who will give form to the world. In the waves at the lower corners, two armed figures rise: Madhu and Kaitabha, the demons said to be born from the ear of the sleeping Vishnu. They turn on Brahma, and in the Devi Mahatmya he prays to Yoga Nidra to release Vishnu from sleep so that he can wake and overcome them. The image holds the moment before that awakening: stillness at the centre, and danger gathering in the waves.

The palette moves from night blues and deep teals to vermilion, burnt orange, cream and ochre, with gold in the crowns, halos and jewellery. Rolling, layered clouds and waves fill the frame, a pale moon and glowing orbs hang in the night sky, and distant rocky peaks mark the edge of the waters. The finely ornamented figures sit small against the broad scale of the clouds, so the eye is drawn to the sleeping god at the centre.