Hiranyagarbha "The Golden Cosmic Egg" c. 1740, by Manaku (c. 1700-1760). This is a sparse but cerebrally complex folio, painted in opaque watercolour and gold on paper, belonging to an unpublished series for the Bhagvata Purana (Bhgavata Pura), in the Bharat Kala Bhavan, BHU, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. Here the 'cosmic egg' itself is one huge, glowing gold ovoid floating against a deep, cold ground, the contours of which expand outward like water or space, or circles of time. Its surface is dappled with warm golds and browns, hinting at both the density of matter and an intrinsic luminosity. This use of abstract ambiguous composition is indeed quite unusual for narrative painting: rather than depicting gods, mythological figures or ancient architecture; Manaku chose to present a profound idea. His starting point is the Vedic-Puranic concept of Hiranyagarbha ('golden womb'/'egg'), the cosmic primal germ of existence. In the cosmological passages of the Bhagvata Purana the cosmos originates as a formless expanse prior to the coming into being of the distinct ordered universe; Manaku captures that metaphysics in painting: the egg clearly presents the concept of potentiality while the patterned field suggests the formless immensity out of which form arises. The work fits into the Guler/Pahari painting context, a Himalayan hill school, where atelier artists would produce intimately scaled paintings on manuscript format for select collectors; these were pictures intended to be appreciated in a small, quiet space. On that level Hiranyagarbha represents a philosophical declaration painted in color: the genesis of the universe is not simply read or listened to, it is seen and contemplated. We are asked to partake of the moment before the start of narrative, when the cosmos exists only as an idea within a solitary shining form.

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