A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s3.t2.8

c15.s3.t2.8

The only relics of an ancient school of Nepalese painting are the miniature illustrations of two manuscripts, Add. 1643, Cambridge, and A. 15, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, which have been minutely studied and in large part reproduced by M. Foucher.¹ Unfortunately, the age of the manuscripts and miniatures is not quite certain, but probably both date from the eleventh century. The older document, that at Cambridge, cannot be later than a.d. 1015; the Calcutta manuscript may be some fifty years posterior in date. The miniatures, numbering 85 in Add. 1643, and 37 in A. 15, equal in height (0m·055) the narrow strip of palm-leaf on which the text is written, and each depicts a holy place, a sacred personage, or an incident in Buddhist legend. Most of them being plainly labelled, they are of high archaeological and historical value, but from the purely aesthetic point of view are not of much account.