Literature

The painting is full of visual imagery and depicts the scene from the Ramayana where Valmiki goes to the river to bathe and sees a pair of Krauncha birds. The male bird is hit by an arrow released by a hunter and is killed. The female bird starts to cry in a mournful voice. In his anger Valmiki curses the hunter in the same rhythm as the bird’s cry, said to be the first poetry composed by humanity:

Oh! Ill-fated Hunter, by which reason you have killed one male bird of the couple, when it is in its lustful passion, your deed will be remembered by the world for ages to come.

Following this episode Valmiki returns to his Ashram and is visited by Brahma, who explains that it was by his guidance that he had uttered the prose and ordains him to author the epic Ramayana.

The work is possibly referred to in Ella Datta's book Ganesh Pyne, His Life and Times;

"Pyne closed the decade [1960s] with a number of fine temperas... no record remains of the series and indeed many other paintings done at this time. But some works like The Wizard and The Bird or The Bloom signalled the emergence of a great artistic vision."