Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c6.s3.120

c6.s3.120

The Pictorial art, *cittakamma*, also seems to have been highly developed and to have added its own quota to the endless artistic glories of India. Paintings were drawn on the walls (*bhitti*) as well as on panels or boards (*phalaka*).¹¹ We read of Prince Kusa preparing a palm-leaf fan for his beloved Pabhāvatī, and depicting on it a white umbrella, and taking as his subject-matter a banquet hall, amongst a variety of other forms, he represents a standing figure of Pabhāvatī.¹² Balls, with various designs painted on them in a variety of colours, are also mentioned (*cittabhenduka*).¹³ In the great religious assembly constructed under the supervision of the wise Mahosadha, painters (*cittakāre*) painted beautiful pictures (*ramaṇīyam cittakamma*), so that the hall became like Sakka’s heavenly palace Sudhammā.¹ And on the walls on either side in the great tunnel—*Mahā-ummagga*—clever painters made various kinds of paintings: the splendour of Sakka, the zones of Mount Sineru, the sea and the ocean, the four continents, Himavat, Lake Anotatta, the Vermillion Mountain, Sun and Moon, the heaven of the four great kings with the six heavens of sense and their divisions—all were to be seen in the paintings,² reminding us of the marvellous paintings in the grand cathedral caves of Ajaṇṭā.³