Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c13.35

c13.35

These contemporary references to the state of painting in India previous to the sixteenth century may be supplemented by an account of the few actual examples of the art which have survived. Of the great mass of wall painting executed after the Buddhist period, implied by the foregoing descriptions, practically nothing is left. At Ellora, in the famous rock-cut temples, there are remains of Brahminical frescoes of the twelfth century, executed in a style which shows that the traditions of Ajanta were still living at this date. On the walls of some of the palaces of Rājputāna there are paintings which may have been executed previous to the founding of the Mughal empire, but this field awaits exploration. This disposes of the whole of the mural decorations at present known to us. There were, however, other means than that of painting on structural surfaces by which the Indian artist might have expressed himself with the brush. Of these there are a few literary references, as well as concrete examples. According to a Chinese writer of the eleventh century at the monastery of Nalanda in Bihar the priests ‘painted pictures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas on the linen of the West’,¹ obviously the same art as that of the *tangka* or temple-banner of Tibet. None of these painted fabrics has been preserved, but on the other hand there are a few rare examples of illustrated books of the pre-Mughal era which have escaped destruction. Several of these are Jain manuscripts on paper containing pictures of the fifteenth century, but they are crudely painted, and show little evidence of artistic experience. Paper, as explained elsewhere, found small favour with the Indian people, either for commercial, literary, or pictorial purposes, until brought into common use by the Mughals. Its place was taken by the palm-leaf, on which the writing was executed by means of a pointed iron style. Some of these palm-leaf manuscripts were illustrated, and a few, with Buddhist miniatures of the twelfth century, have been handed down to us. It seems fairly clear, however, that there was a very limited amount of painting executed in mediaeval India on any other surface than that of the walls of buildings.