Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c12.10

c12.10

The next stage in the development of Western Indian school reaches in the illustrated palm-leaf manuscripts from roughly 1100 to 1300 A.D. Wall-paintings in Western India are, however, unknown, though from the 11th or 12th century wall-paintings from Tirumalai, Madanpur, and Pagan, it could be said that the wall-paintings in Western India must have been similar to them. In the miniatures of the 12th century, there is a tendency towards simplification. Here, there are no elaborate compositions, the line and colours are simple, and the background usually painted in monochrome. In short, these paintings prefer directness of expression to technical perfection. It is not the art of the philosophers with all its metaphysical implications, but the art of the matter-of-fact business community which regarded art in its business setting. The fancy of the artists does not soar high enough to see in the figures of the Jinas and the gods and godlings the working of a spiritual force; typologically, the Jinas and the gods to them were little different to their patrons, only the distinguishing symbols and elevated position of the former sought to distinguish them from the common run of men. From the above remarks, however, it should not be understood that symbolism in Western Indian art did not play any part. On the contrary, iconography did play an important part in the period under review. An elaborate system of sacred symbols and iconographic types of Vidyādevīs and Yakhsas was known to Western Indian artists, but there is little æsthetic significance in them, and their types are repeated with such nonchalance that they become more or less decorative patterns.