Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c10.s3.11

c10.s3.11

In Western Indian miniatures of the 14th century and later, the realistic tendencies of the early landscape are replaced by purely decorative conception. The monochrome red background in these miniatures leaves no place for the converging perspective. The figures are not disposed one behind the other as in the contemporary Bengali paintings of the 11th and 12th centuries, but are superimposed. The heights of the figures do not depend on the real dimensions of the subjects depicted, nor are their representations governed by the position of the objects in space, but on the importance of the figures in the composition. Thus, the height of a man at times is greater than that of an elephant, trees or a building, because the former represents a Jina or a prince and hence his importance must be emphasised by enlarging the figure. In such a primitive and highly conventional view-point of the perspective, landscape finds little space. In the miniatures of the *Subāhu Kathā* (Figs. 51-52), we find for the first time certain elements of landscape, such as trees, birds and hills, but their treatment is conventional. In the 14th century cloth-painting of the *Pañchatīrthī* (Figs. 177-185), however, blue hills edged with white and studded with trees is a definite improvement in the conventional landscape. In the fifteenth century miniatures, the following features of the landscape may be marked :-