Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c10.s1.1

c10.s1.1

Conforming to an ideal of beauty idolised in ancient Indian literature, the human figure dominates Indian painting. The man in Indian art has always a frail and mobile form of a youth. An elegant profile, little body without muscular development, large shoulders, delicate waist, and the lion-like stature constitute the idealised canon of physical beauty. The female form is characterised by its full sensuous development. The heavy swelling breasts simulating full rounded form of a water-pot, well moulded haunches, the slender waist gracefully poising the torso, the eyes comparable to the lotus-petal or fish with the black pupils alight with *joie de vivre* and terminating in long eyelashes, and the majestic gait of an elephant are some of the physical characteristics of women, which appealed greatly to the æsthetic sense of the Indians, and formed an idealised convention for their representation in ancient Indian paintings of Ajaṇṭā, Bāgh and Sittannavāsal.