Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c12.7

c12.7

To understand the aesthetic significance of Western Indian painting, we have to approach the Ellura paintings, which are the earliest survivals of Western Indian painting and which are nearer to its original character than the twelfth century illustrations on palm-leaves and wooden book-covers. The frescoes at Rangmahal are Brahmanical and quite in line with the spiritual and aesthetic ideals set up in the sculpture. To understand the aesthetic connotation of these paintings, however, one has to understand their associations which are Brahmanical mythologies, the stories of Siva and Vishnu and the elements they represent. In all these paintings, there broods a sense of deep meditative contemplation, which is palpable not only in the figures of the gods and goddesses but also in the Apsarases floating on the woolly clouds. The paintings, however, suffer on technical grounds on account of the flatness which has discarded modelling and, therefore, unable to catch the æsthetic grandeur of the stone reliefs of Ellura, which throb with a sense of divine contemplation born of spiritual contentment. It is an art of lines with preference for angularities and simple colour scheme and often overcrowded composition. The knowledge of the well established iconographic types of the Brahmanical gods and their symbolical significance are essential for understanding the æsthetic and metaphysical implications of Ellura paintings. To sum up, the æsthetic qualities of Ellura paintings are to be understood not as a separate phenomenon which defies analysis, but as the part and parcel of a great temple with its associations of other artistic wealth, and the deep metaphysical conviction prevailing through its sculptures. Viewed in such associations, the paintings fit perfectly in the general scheme of the temple, and their technical shortcomings do not matter.