Jaina Art and Architecture Vol 03

SR No.: 011014
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A Ghosh
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1975
Total Pages: 403
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 40

PAINTINGS AND WOOD-CARVINGS
Another development in the late thirteenth century is that the illustrators, even in the limited format at their disposal, began increasingly to give expression to the subject matter of the text in a parrative form and with greater from dom than before. The single deities, with and without attendants, are now sometimes replaced by scepes from the lives of the Tirthankaras. There are two such notable examples. The first is a manuscript of the Subahta-katha and other stories in the collection of the Sanghvi Bhandara, Patan, dated 1288. It depicts incidents from the life of Neminátha and there are as many as twentythree illustrations. Rudimentary landscape is introduced in the form of rocks, trees and animals of the forest, while incidents are at times unfolded by employing the method of continuous narration in which the different events which comprise an incident are all placed in the picture-space of a single illustration. This method as well as the treatment of landscape must have been known to the painters of the early Jaina pattas (on cloth) and of the walls of Jaina shrines prior to the eleventh century. But apart from the wooden patlis, such innovations had hitherto not been attempted on the restricted format available for illustration on the palm-leaves themselves which bore the text. These departures from bare iconographic representations indicate a realization of the possibilities of miniature painting and the utilization for compositional purposes of even the most limited space.
The second manuscript belonging to this category is undated but it is obviously to be ascribed to the same period. It depicts episodes from the lives of the Tirthařkaras Pārsvanätha and Neminătha. It is in the Jaina Bhandara at Jaisalmer (plate 271A, B, C, D) and has twenty miniatures. The illustrations of both these manuscripts possess a rare charm and a more spontaneous approach than the earlier manuscript-illustration of single deities. However, certain conventions for depicting the stock events in the life of a Tirthankara can already be observed and were probably derived from similar conventions which had grown up before the eleventh century in the paintings on paffas and on the walls of Jaina temples. Though paper had come into use in Gujarat as early as the twelfth century for preparing manuscript-texts, it did not become a vehicle for manuscript-illustrations till about the mid-fourteenth century and even then it was somewhat tardily adopted round about 1400 employing a rather narrow format in imitation of the palm-leaves. Accordingly,
Ibid., figs, 50 to 53. • Sarabhai Nawab, op, cit., plates J to S (in colour).
* In the L. D. Institute, Ahmedabad, there is a folio of a paper manuscript Santindtha-boli, dated 1294. A Jaina manuscript, with a twelfth-century date, was in the posscanion of Muni Jinavijayaji.
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