Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c6.160

c6.160

From the detailed discussion about the designations of the so-called Jain painting proposed by different authorities, it is evident that the earlier designation ‘Jain’ has been finally discarded on very solid grounds. The designation ‘Śvetāmbara Jain school’, proposed by Prof. W. Norman Brown, on the ground that the miniatures are exclusively Śvetāmbara Jain in subject-matter and that protrusion of the farther eye in this style was borrowed by the painters from the glass eyes of the Śvetāmbara Jain icons, is also not supported by facts. It is not right to say that the miniatures are confined to the Śvetāmbaras only, as miniatures in the palm-leaf manuscript of the Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama Dhavalā Ṭikā, a Digambara Jain religious text, datable between 1113 and 1120 A.D., are known. We also know that the wall-paintings of the 12th century at Tirumalai are definitely Digambara in subject-matter. At an earlier period, the style is traceable in the Ellura frescoes, and its subsequent progress may be seen in the 11th century Brahmanical wall-paintings of the Vijayālaya Colīśvara temple of Narttamalai. Then its traces are found in the wall-paintings of the Viṣṇu temple at Madanpur, on the border-land of Mālwā and the United Provinces, and its characteristic features are borrowed by the Nandamanna and Paya-thou-zu wall-paintings at Pagan in Burma. The theory of its being exclusively Śvetāmbara Jain is further exploded with the discovery of such Brahmanical illustrated manuscripts as the Devī-māhātmya and Bālagopāla-stuti, and the illustrations of more sordid subjects as the Ratirahasya and Vasanta Vilāsa, both dealing with erotics. Not only that the style exerts a powerful influence on the 11th to 13th century miniatures from Eastern India and Nepāl, but there are documents from the eastern United Provinces and Orissa which show that the style had penetrated even in those far off places. For such a widely diffused style, a sectarian designation is hardly appropriate.