A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s6: Section VI. Southern India
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s6
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Section VI. Southern India
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The Jain holy place at Tirumalai, to the south of Vellore, in the North Arcot District, Madras, is remarkable as possessing the remains of a set of wall and ceiling paintings ascribed, on the evidence of inscriptions, to the eleventh century (*Ep. Ind.* ix. 229). Traces exist of still older paintings covered up by the existing works. The principal design now visible is a circular wheel, three feet in diameter, painted on plaster applied to the brick wall of a chamber at the foot of the rock overhanging the temple. The nave of the wheel is occupied by a Jain saint (*Tīrthankara*) seated cross-legged in the usual manner, and flanked by two attendants with fly-whisks. The rest of the surface of the wheel is divided into twelve compartments, separated by as many spokes, and each filled by a crowd of worshippers, mostly men. But one compartment contains twelve white-robed nuns, nine of whom have brown faces, the remaining three being tinted greenish-blue; and another compartment is occupied by oxen, elephants, and leopards as representatives of the animal creation adoring its Lord. Traces of flying figures are visible in the spandrils between the circumference of the wheel and the edges of the square black panel on which it is painted. The whole surface appears to have been covered with a black wash on which the design was superimposed. The colours, white, shades of brown, and a little greenish-blue, are not brilliant.
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The ceiling of the upper story, formed by the underside of the overhanging rock, is similarly plastered and painted with neat but spiritless designs of a purely conventional kind. The wheel possesses little merit as a work of art, and is interesting rather as a proof of decadence than for its own sake. The contrast with the Ajaṇṭā designs is worth noting. By the courtesy of the Government of Madras and Mr. A. Rea, Superintendent of Archaeology, the sheet of coloured drawings of the paintings has been placed at my disposal, but an accident has prevented reproduction of the wheel. The minor designs are not worth copying.
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At Conjeeveram, the ancient Kānchī, the capital of the Pallava kings in the early centuries of the Christian era, two old Brahmanical temples, Kamākshi Amman and Vamtharāja Perumal, are prettily decorated with coloured distemper patterns composed of geometrical forms and neat floral devices, of uncertain date. The general effect is no better than that of a cheerful wall-paper.
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The second temple named is further adorned by paintings, probably modern, of the extraordinary 'mixed figures', specimens of which occur occasionally in albums of Indian drawings. One of the Conjeeveram pictures represents a male archer mounted on an elephant, of which the body, limbs, and trunk are made up of nine female musicians, whose forms are combined with much perverted ingenuity. The companion picture represents a female archer riding a horse similarly compounded of five figures. According to a book in the India Office Library (No. 309, 29 F. 8) the male rider is 'Manmadah', and the female is his consort, 'Kuthee Davee.' Such grotesque freaks of design are painfully vivid illustrations of the degradation suffered by art when an exuberant fancy is allowed to run riot unchecked by good taste; and unhappily such aberrations are the rule rather than the exception in the later Hindu art, especially of the South.
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Wall-paintings of subjects from the epics, executed during the reign of Mahārāja Mārtanda Varma of Travancore, and existing on the walls of the inner temple of Srī Padmanabha Swāmi at Trivandrum, are said to be good, but are so placed that it is impossible to photograph them. Miniature portraits of the Mahārājas, going back to the early part of the eighteenth century, are kept in the palace at Trivandrum, but no information concerning their origin, technique, or artistic value is available.¹
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¹ ^1 *Travancore Manual*, vol. iii, p. 263.
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Certain paintings, dating probably from the eighteenth century, on the roof of the Jangam Math, or monastery, at Anegundi in the Rāichūr District of the Nizam's Dominions, depict *fakīrs*, or ascetics, their followers and admirers, with considerable spirit and vigour, but are not worth reproducing.²
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² ^2 Coloured plates 32, 33, executed between 1793 and 1803, in Mackenzie MSS., vol. i, India Office Library; Wilson, *Catalogue*, ccxxiii. 1.