Sugriva Atlas Book Cover

The Cover

At Winning Pixels we designed the book cover for Sugriva's Atlas, the much-awaited book by Nilesh Oak and Mitra Desai.

The Subject

The passage the book is built on comes from the Kishkindha Kanda, the fourth
book of Valmiki's Ramayana. Sugriva, restored to the throne of Kishkindha with
Ram's help, sends vanara search parties out in the four directions to find Sita.

What is peculiar is what he says as he sends them. Rather than issuing a general
instruction, Sugriva describes each direction in detail — mountain ranges,
rivers, islands, seas, peoples and their customs, the lands beyond the lands —
naming features in sequence as though reading from something. The southern
briefing runs to the ocean and past it; the northern reaches into territory
described as beyond the Himalaya and beyond ordinary habitation.

The specificity is the puzzle. A poetic invocation of the four quarters would
not need this level of detail, and would not order it geographically. That the
description is structured the way an itinerary is structured invites the
question the book asks: how much of the globe was actually known, and to whom,
at the time the passage was composed.

The Design

The book takes up the peculiar passages of the Ramayana in which Sugriva instructs his Vanara party — his monkey warriors — to cross the globe in search of Sita. In doing so he describes the globe in a great deal of striking detail, which is peculiar and therefore a mystery. He also alludes to the antiquity of India, and to how much knowledge of the globe already existed there at the time. The cover was designed to carry that subject.