Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c6.262

c6.262

Group B. This style never achieves the careful detail of the second sub-variety of style ‘A’. The earliest examples of this style appear in the manuscript No. 1155 of the Śrī Vira Vijayaji Jain Śvetāmbara Jñāna Bhaṇḍār, at Chhāṇī, near Baroda. It is dated 1161 A.D., and has twenty-one illustrations, most of them being of the Vidyādevīs. The lines in these are not smooth flowing curves as are those of the paintings in style ‘A’; rather they consist of parts joined angularly. There is a characteristic treatment of the eyes, which are not drawn as a pair on a continual horizontal axis, as is either the case or nearly the case with the examples of style ‘A’, but are drawn on separate axes at different levels, so that at the nose the inside corner of one eye is considerably below the level of the inside corner of the other. There is sometimes shading (Fig. 13), which is accomplished by using colour and shaded line.²⁹