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FOREWORD We are indebted to the Svetambaras of Western India and the Buddhists of Eastern India for all our known Indian miniature paintings from before the 15th century A.D. The Buddhist specimens are older, the earliest coming from near the end of the 10th century. Among the Jains there is a palm-leaf manuscript of the. Kalpasutra, bearing illustrations reproduced by Mr. Nawab, which bears the date of Vikrama Samvat 927, but for reasons which Mr. Nawab will doubtless advance this date must be considerd spurious, with the true date possibly being Vikrama Samvat 1427. We still know no older examples of the Early Western Indian school than those in the Shantinath temple bhandar, Cambay, dated Vikrama Samvat 1184.
Of the early Buddhist and Jain miniatures opinion may vary as to which are aesthetically superior; that both have been profoundly important is undeniable. The Buddhist tradition of manuscript painting in northern Bengal and Nepal continues there to the present day, and it was long since transported to Tibet where also it still persists. The Svetambara paintings of Gujarat and later Rajputana are the mother which the Persian styles impregnated to produce types now known as
Rajput". The somewhat slighting treatment accorded these two ancient schools by many writers on Indian miniature paintings who are blind until they look upon the end of the 15th century is due to those scholar's subjective aesthetic prepossessions rather than any intrinsic lack of importance in the two schools themselves.
The illustrations of Mr. Nawab's book have high value in presenting new material study of the history of Early Western Indian miniature painting and Svetambara iconography. During the latter part of the 14th century A. D. and the early part of the 15th century, that is to say, at the end of the "palm-leaf" period and beginning of the "paper", the paintings have a special delicacy and refinement unknown in the earlier examples and yet without the profuse embellishment and often degeneration of the late 15th and 16th centuries. At this time we find the best drawing of the whole school; and since the
