Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c11.s1.28

c11.s1.28

We have so far been taking notice of the plain or printed calico of Gujarāt and its export to different parts of Asia and Africa. The notices taken by the foreign travellers are, however, cryptic, and we are not told anything about the technical processes involved in weaving and printing. This ignorance about one of the oldest handicrafts of this country would have continued, had not two factors come to our rescue—the publication of Western Indian miniatures from the 12th to the 16th century, which have preserved in the treatment of the costumes the patterns employed in textile printing, and the discovery of a number of printed calico pieces from the sands of Fustāt, ably discussed and classified by R. Pfister in his work *Les toiles imprimees de Fostat et l'Hindoustan*. In this book the learned author has come to the conclusion that, of a very large number of printed calico pieces discovered at Fustāt, a very small part is of Egyptian origin, the rest being from India. The author himself admits the difficulties besetting such a pioneer study, because, firstly, India does not supply any textile fabric manufactured between the 12th and 16th centuries, and, secondly, because India had already, before the Muslim conquest, submitted to the influence of the neighbouring countries, such as Persia, Central Asia and China, and, in the art of printing, these foreign influences are much more pronounced than in the monumental art whose sacerdotal character resisted innovation. The textile patterns in the contemporary literature remain superficially touched. As we shall see later on such kind of painstaking research gives a chronological basis for the patterns used in the printed calicoes of Gujarāt from the 12th to 16th century.