The brief was to draw the Navagunjara so each of its nine parts stays legible — rooster head, peacock neck, bull hump, lion waist, serpent tail, the single human arm with its lotus — without the beast collapsing into a muddle. Central-deity composition gives the creature the right of the field as the hero, large and clearly jointed against a geru ground, while Arjuna stands quietly at the left with his bow lowered, offering a lotus rather than an arrow. That gesture is the whole point: in the Odia Mahabharata, Arjuna lowers his weapon before this wondrous form, and the painting holds that exact instant of recognition. The flowering tree and the plants along the ground line keep it a forest, not a void.