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Literary and Performing Arts
The earliest evidence for this is provided by the Jain canonical literature. Several texts like the Viyāhapannatti, Nāyādhammakahā and Ovavāiya refer to maikha, a class of wandering beggars, who earned their daily food by showing picture-boards (mamkhaphalaya) to the people4. From later texts like Viśākhadatta's Mudrārākṣasa and Bäņa's Harşacarita we know that such picture-boards or picture-scrolls (yamapata) depicted punishments in hells suffered by various sinners. The showman also sang verses that narrated the pictorial scenes. If we are to trust the canonical account, the father of Gośāla, who was an ascetic associate of Vardhamāna Mahāyīra, was a Maskha. This would suggest that the practice was as old as the sixth century B.C.
In a Jain religious tale written in Prakrit in 779 A.D., we find an elaborate poetic description of two such picture scrolls. Uddyotanasūri's Kuyalayamālā narrates an episode figuring a teacher who exhibits and describes to a prince two scrolls which he himself had painted. The first scroll depicted the cycle of births and deaths (saṁsāra-cakra), which consisted of countless scenes relating to living beings with their struggles, momentary joys and endless sufferings in the three divisions of the universe, viz., the earth, heavens and hells. The description extends over more than one hundred and fifty verses. What we find here is a poetic elaboration of the prevalent practice of showing the yamapatas.
The other picture scrollo, described in the Kuvalaymālā, relates to a different theme. It is a religious tale having the identical 'purpose of edifying and inculcating the spirit of renunciation In a passage of more than a hundred verses are described the scenes of struggles and travails of two brothers, extending over their three successive births7.
From another Jain work we know that the picture-scrolls were also used to make more spectacular the narration of popular tales. In a Jain religious work Vaddārādhane, written in Kannada in circa tenth century A.D., there is a tale about a picture-showman,
