Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c9.s4.6

c9.s4.6

*Ultramarine azure (rājāvarta, lāzvard).*—There is evidence to show that blue was extracted from the lapis lazuli in quite early times, long before any of the recipes for its extraction was known to European texts on colour-making. As its name suggests, this colour was brought ready made from some land ‘across the seas’ to Europe. The lapis lazuli, from which ultramarine blue was extracted, is almost exclusively found in Badakshān and Persia. Its source as a colour was known since a long time, as attested by the wall-paintings of Ajaṇṭā³². The *Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇa*³³ counts the lapis lazuli (*rājavarta*) as a colouring material, and in the *Harshacharita* (middle of the 7th century)³⁴ the ultramarine tunics (*rājavartaka mechakaiḥ kañchukaiḥ*) are praised. In the *Mānasollāsa*³⁵ the shade of the *rājavarta* is compared with the colour of the flowers of *Linum Usitatissimum* or common flax plant, which shows that its author was well acquainted with this colour. The *rājavarta* or *rājavarta*, wrongly translated by Dr. Stella Kramrisch as ‘deep coloured brass’³⁶, is apparently the Sanskritised form of the Persian *lāzward*, meaning lapis lazuli, the source of ultramarine azure. It could be, therefore, said that the stone was imported from Persia, and, perhaps, the colour was also imported ready made, as no process for its manufacture is mentioned in Sanskrit texts.