Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c10.s2.1

c10.s2.1

No Indian landscape is complete without animals. The animals, according to the Hindu way of thinking, do not form a separate world as opposed to human beings. The belief in the transmigration of the soul places the animal world on the same footing as human being, though on the lower rung of the ascending scale of evolution. But, in this chain of successive existences determined by *karma*, the mineral, vegetable, animal and human existences are able to take two opposite directions; the spirit of an animal could incarnate in a human body, or the human spirit could fall so low as to enter the body of a beast, or fall still lower and enter the vegetable or animal kingdom. The end of each existence is to liberate oneself from successive existences till final liberation is achieved. This theory of the close bond between the human and animal life, further strengthened by the theory of Ahimsā which became a landmark in the Buddhist and Jain teachings and resulted in the non-violability of animal life, inculcated the love and sympathetic understanding of animal life, not known elsewhere.