Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c6.3

c6.3

This predilection for painting must have resulted in the production of a good number of paintings in ancient India, but unfortunately the levelling hand of time, the destructible nature of carriers, such as wood, cloth and plaster, and the vandalism of men have caused their destruction to such an extent that the examples of ancient Indian paintings could be counted on fingers. In the wall-paintings of Ajaṇṭā, Bāgh, Sittannavāsal, and a few remaining wall-paintings from Badāmī one may see, however, the greatness of the ancient Indian pictorial art. In the neatness of drawing, in the marvellous manipulation of a few simple colours made to yield various tonalities, and in the high aesthetic considerations which moved the artists, Indian painting in the fifth and sixth centuries remains unparalleled. In these wall-paintings one may see the culminating point of that pagan art which begins at Bharhut, develops at Sāñchī and attains tempestuous movement and emotional value at Amarāvatī. Divine contemplation, probing the dark mysteries of life, is not the key-note of the pictorial art of the Gupta period though the contemporary art of sculpture had already imbibed the ideal of lofty spiritualism. It would be idle to deny that the art of Ajaṇṭā does not imbibe spirituality to a certain extent, specially in the noble figures of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the supreme gift of the Gupta age. But the purpose of an art could not be defined on such features of unusual occurrence. The art of Ajaṇṭā delights in the scenes of love-making, drinking parties, sumptuous palaces and crowded processions.