This Indian miniature illustrates the central scene of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna driving the chariot of Arjuna on the eve of the Kurukshetra battle, the moment when Arjuna asks why he should fight his own kin, and Krishna delivers the 700-verse philosophical dialogue that forms the heart of the Mahabharata. The painting depicts Krishna at the reins (in blue, the conventional iconography), Arjuna seated in the chariot, and the rearing horses pulling them toward the field.

The Bhagavad Gita is the philosophical core embedded in Book 6 of the Mahabharata, the great Sanskrit epic compiled between roughly 400 BCE and 400 CE. The Gita's teaching turns on the doctrine of karma yoga: action performed without attachment to its fruits as the discipline of liberation. Krishna's speech weaves together the three classical Indian paths to liberation (karma yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga) into a single integrated doctrine that has been the most-commented-upon text in the entire Hindu tradition since the 8th-century commentary of Shankara.

The chariot iconography of Krishna-and-Arjuna is among the most reproduced visual references for the Gita across temple sculpture, manuscript illumination, court painting, and modern reproduction. The painting illustrated here is held in a private collection; comparable versions exist across the major South Asian art collections of the British Museum, Victoria and Albert, MFA Boston, and LACMA.