Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c5.9

c5.9

We have mentioned in the first chapter that no traces of Western Indian school of painting prior to the early twelfth century are found in its homeland and that for its earlier history we have to depend on the wall-paintings of Ellura. This paucity of the documents of Western Indian school of painting in Gujarāt and Rājputānā may be attributed to the destruction of the artistic monuments by the onslaught of the Muslims who wreaked the vengeance of their iconoclastic zeal on Hindu temples and palaces. In these centuries of storm and stress, precious documents of Western Indian school of painting on palm-leaf and cloth were irretrievably lost. Fortunately, a part of such documents of Western Indian art has been saved to us and the credit for its safe preservation goes to the Śvetāmbara Jain Jñāna Bhaṇḍārs. It would not be out of place here to say something more about these ancient libraries which have preserved to the posterity invaluable documents of Indian culture.