Jain Journal 1970 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 10

204
JAIN JOURNAL
paintings, datable perhaps in the tenth or eleventh century, may have a bearing, although the protrusion is not prominent there ; perhaps the artist was representing nothing more than the eyelashes. The phenomenon, as far as I am aware, does not appear in the paintings at Ajanta, Bagh, Sittanavasal, the Jaina (Digambara) caves at Elura, and the Digambara structural temple at Conjeevaram, where there are two styles of ceiling painting one painted on top of the other palimpsest fashion, of which the second is the only one so far reported in print12. The Digambara Jainas do not ornament their images with the additional glass eyes, and hence would have no established temple type to imitate, as did the Svetambaras. In a note to me Doctor Coomaraswamy calls my attention to a remark by Otto Fischer (Die Kunst Indiens, p.59) “uber den umrissvorspringende Auge” in the Burmese paintings at Pagan. I cannot presume to estimate the significance of the phenomenon there ; I can only point out the difficulty of relating it to that in Western India. There is a wide extent of territory between the two places, and so far there have been reported in the geographically intervening styles of painting (the Pala style in Bengal and the style in Orissa) no instances of the protruding eye, which might serve as connecting links between the styles of Gujarat and Pagan. It seems more likely that the origin of the phenomenon is in each place independent of the origin in the other. Last of all there has come to light a small engraved bronze vessel which shows a tendency in some figures, but not all, toward the protruding eye, most of them exhibiting only the protruding eyelash. This vessel Doctor Coomaraswamy (Ostasiaische Zeitschr. N.F. 6, Heft 5, 1930) considers on stylistic grounds to come from Western India and to be of late or immediately post-Gupta times, but it seems to me rather to come from Central Asia13 In style it shows some little similarity to Western Indian painting, but like so many other fine pieces it has no documentation and is not satisfactory to use as evidence in determining the origin of the protruding eye motif. It still seems to me, therefore, that this phenomenon is best explained as having its origin in the copying of images with their additional glass eyes as found in Svetambara temples.
For we may go still further, and say that the angular features of the human face as drawn by Svetambara Jaina artists, and following them secular and Hindu artists in Western India, do not result from a desire to simplify the execution, as Mr. Ghose suggests, but rather from direct copying of medieval Jaina Tirthankara images, which have faces that look exactly like those of the Tirthankaras and other unbearded
12 Coomaraswamy (3), p.119. 13 See in the Pennsylvania Mus. Bull., vol. 27, no. 148, p. 138, April, 1932.