Krishna in the Garden of Assam

The Vrindavani Vastra is the most important surviving example of an Assamese devotional textile. This beautiful and rare textile, now in the British Museum, was produced in the late seventeenth century in the wake of the remarkable outflow of Krishna veneration resulting from the ministry of the great eastern Indian saint, Sankaradava (died 1568). Nine metres in length, it is made up of twelve strips, all now sown together, and woven with captioned scenes from the life of Krishna as recorded in the tenth-century text, the Bhagavata Purana, and elaborated in the dramas of Sankaradeva. The author looks at the art, technique and iconography of the textile and also place it within its wider religious, cultural and geographical contexts. He traces, too, its fascinating history and its journey from Assam to London.