Vedic Art Print – Parna Palasha, The Flame-Orange Blossom Branch

Provenance

'Parna Palasha' is composed as a botanical plate: a flowering branch heavy with flame-orange blooms crosses a parchment-toned ground, with a petal, a halved flower, a leaf, a bud, a pod, a seed and a branch cross-section set around it. The Devanagari words 'पर्ण · पलाश' are lettered below with a reference to the Atharvaveda, 3.5, a hymn to the Parna amulet, invoked for a king's authority, strength and long life. The print lets the three dense clusters of blossom lead the eye down the branch.

Curved, flame-orange petals unfurl from dark, velvety buds in three dense clusters along a bare, knotted branch, set among rounded, grey-green leaves. At the edges sit a single petal and a halved flower with its stamens exposed at upper left, a leaf at upper right, a bud at right, an opened pod with a single brown seed and a loose seed at lower right, and a cross-section of the branch beside them.

Vermilion and gold-orange blossom sit against sage-green leaves and dark brown calyxes, on ochre-cream parchment. Fine pen lines describe each petal and leaf vein, and the faint mottling of the ground is visible in the image itself.