Lightly coloured drawing in black ink with colour wash heightened with gold on paper, signed in the margin beneath the painting, the reverse with 27 lines of small nasta'liq in black ink

In good overall condition, some slight worming with holes carefully filled, some consolidation to the border edges, painting in good condition, as viewed.
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This Razmnama painting in nim-qalam style depicts Bhima killing Kicaka and his hundred and one brothers as a punishment for Kicaka's lecherous behaviour towards Draupadi. The inscription in nasta'liq below the painting reads 'Bhima kills Kicaka and his 101 brothers and someone taking the hand of Draupadi...'. The text on the reverse is from the Mahabharata Book IV, 21-24, and tells the story illustrated here.

The Razmnama is the abridged version of the Hindu epic poem the Mahabharata which tells the story of a rivalry between cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, for the kingdom of Hastinpura. One of the cent💯ral figures is the god Krishna, who assists the Pandava brothers. This vast work was translated into Persian at the request of Akbar in 1582-3 but the presentation manuscript with 168 paintings, now preservedꩵ in the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum in Jaipur, was not completed until 1586.

The current illustration comes from the second copy of the Razmnama that was finished in 1598-9, the final five parts and colophon of which are housed in the British Library. However, it is not merely a replica of the imperial prototype, as less than a fifth of its paintings, including the present scene, are represented in the Jaipur Razmnama.

This full page work, along with nine of the manuscript's other paintings, is by the artist Dhannu, a prolific pinter of the Imperial Mughal atelier of the period 1580-1605. His earlist works can be found in the Darabnama of circa 1580, and later in the Tarikh-i Khandan-i Timuriyya; the Jaipur Razmnama; the Victoria and Albert Museum Akbarnama; the Keir Khamsa of Nizami; the Jaipur Ramayana; the British Library Baburnama; the National Museum Baburnama; the 'Iyar-i Danish; the 1596 Chingiznama and the Akhlaq-i Nasiri. The most distinctive feature of Dhannu's painting style is his treatment of the faces which at times borders on caricature. In this instance many of the faces are finely drawn, particularly that of the wild-haired Bhima, whose expression whilst effortlessly dispatching four brothers verges on the nonchalant. The body of the dead Kicaka burns on a pyre in the foreground. For a detailed discussion of the 1598 Razmnama see J.Seyller, 'Model and Copy: The Illustration of Three Razmnama Manuscripts', Archives of Asian Art xxxviii (1985), pp.37-66.