Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c10.s4: The Laws of Grouping and Composition
Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c10.s4
- Language
- English
The Laws of Grouping and Composition
c10.s4.1
Any study of Indian art based solely on the analytical principles is bound to remain incomplete, if the basic principles which give it permanent values are ignored. Once the analysis is over the synthesis of all the consistent elements remain to be treated. In other words, this synthesis resolves itself in the study of the means employed by the Indian artists to realise unity in their works. We are thus brought to the problems of composition, line and colour.
c10.s4.2
In landscape painting as well as figure drawing, the Indian composition has an element of reality, as settled by the conventions of the time. It may look very strange to us steeped into the Western ideas of composition, but it, nevertheless, serves the purpose by maintaining an equilibrium in the composition. The wall-paintings of Ajaṇṭā support our view. At the first sight, the paintings give an impression that the numerous figures appearing in the composition are disposed, without any preconceived plan, in a manner so natural that it appears almost accidental. More careful observation, however, reveals that the apparent confusion is not real, but that there is a definite order which governs the grouping of the figures.
c10.s4.3
In their efforts to be realistic, the painters of Ajaṇṭā took pains to avoid the arrangements in which direct control of the outline is too apparent. Bearing this end in view, the paintings of Ajaṇṭā avoid neatly marked primitive symmetry and immobilised groups deprived of life. The compositions at Ajaṇṭā, on the other hand, are based on the complicated arrangement in which the variety of the attitudes and groups appear to be inexhaustible. But this richness of form, instead of ending the chaotic groups hostile to all conception of unity, added more confusion. Utilised however with care, it created well-balanced composition, its unity undisturbed by the presence of various heterogeneous elements.
c10.s4.4
The ancient artists employed various ingenious means to give a convincing outlook to their composition. We are, however, not aware whether they were codified at any time. The treatises on painting in Sanskrit allot sufficient space to the conventions employed in landscape, figure drawing, stances and colours, but silently pass by the problem of linear composition. This gap could be filled up from the information we receive from the actual paintings come down to us.
c10.s4.5
Indian painters treated colours as necessary adjuncts to clever linear composition. There were five primary colours—white, yellow, red, black and blue. The trained artists could, however, attain hundred different shades by clever admixture. The white is classified according to its various degrees of luminosity: white brilliant as gold, pure sandal white, autumnal cloud white, and autumnal moon-white.⁷⁴ The varieties of śyāma (dark)⁷⁵ are twelve, namely, reddish, greenish, grayish, tawny, topaz, priyaṅgu creeper dark, monkey dark, blue lotus shade, blue of the Nilkaṇṭha bird, purple lotus shade, and cloud gray. These dark shades were used in accordance with the colours of the objects.
c10.s4.6
⁷⁴ Viṣṇudharmottara, tr. by Stella Kramrisch, p. 32.
c10.s4.7
⁷⁵ Ib., pp. 32-33.
c10.s4.8
Fig. 184
c10.s4.9
Fig. 185
c10.s4.10
Fig. 186
c10.s4.11
Fig. 187
c10.s4.12
This precise information about the colours in ancient Indian painting is supplemented by the wall-paintings of Ajaṇṭā, which have preserved numerous instances of colour harmonies to be discovered in the blending of the ivory white, the shade of autumn-al clouds, the sombre shade of the purple lotus and the silvery gray of the monkey.⁷⁶
c10.s4.13
⁷⁶ Stchoukine, loc. cit., p. 141.
c10.s4.14
In spite of this keen sense of perception in different colour shades, the problem of light was ignored by the artists. Instead of representing the phenomenon of light directly, they had recourse to secondary details accompanying the phenomenon capable of invoking light by association. Thus, the moonlight was expressed by the presence of the kumuda flower which blossoms in the night, the sunshine by the creatures suffering from heat, and the dawn mist by the rising sun, the dim lamp and the crowing cocks.⁷⁷
c10.s4.15
⁷⁷ Kramrisch, Viṣṇudharmottara, p. 58.
c10.s4.16
After the tenth century, however, the conventions of varied composition and the representation of groups after uniform and primitive rules are almost forgotten, and in Western Indian miniatures throughout one may see, not without regret, only the traces of the classical precepts. Varieties in colour tones give place to the crudity of the contrasting colours, and the crude perspective to an alignment or the superimposition of the figures and objects, in order to show their relative distances. From this proceeds, in the composition, the division of the painted surface in a number of sections.
c10.s4.17
The composition in Western Indian miniatures shows more unity when the subject is spread out in the same plane. The superimposition then becomes useless, and the artist then can concentrate on the problem of grouping his figures. The principle which dominates in this case is that of opposition : the figures arranged in the rigorously co-ordinated poses at the extreme ends of the painting are plunged in the attitude of mutual contemplation. For instance, a man and a woman seated facing one another in the attitude conforming to such point of view should merge into one another if the painting were to be folded. This co-ordination in other cases became more complicated.
c10.s4.18
The choice of colours fortified the impression of uniformity in medieval Western Indian painting. The figures are often in yellow or gold on red background, the other objects are painted in blue, maroon, green and rose. It results in a very neat colour contrast, the gold gaining intensity on red ground and the beauty of the red is increased in the proximity of gold. Sometimes, soft and dull tones, such as pale yellow, olive green, etc., which remind of the ancient palette, are used.
Linked texts (2)
- Viṣṇudharmottarapurāṇa — Sanskrit
- Ajanta