Jain Journal 1970 04

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

Page 16

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JAIN JOURNAL
gold or silver writing on a prepared red or black or blue, or sometimes an unprepared white, background. There is no proof that the writing with silver or gold ink on the coloured surface is the oldest writing used with illustrated Svetambara manuscripts, as Mr. Ghose suggests ; for the earliest dated paper manuscripts without miniatures are written with black ink, like the palm leaf manuscripts, on a plain background. The use of gold or silver ink and the coloured surface indicate only an unusual outlay of money on the part of those laymen who gained merit by having the manuuscript copied. The use of gold and silver ink on a specially prepared background persists to the time when the Svetambaras executed the illustrations in the Mughal style, and I have seen at Patan a most elaborate Kalpa Sutra from that period on large size folios done thus. A general principle, yet one which is by no means infallible, for estimating the age of undated paper manuscripts may perhaps be found in ascertaining the dimentions of the page : the nearer the measurements approach those of the palm-leaf folios, the more likely the manuscript is to be of the fifteenth century rather than
xteenth or seventeenth. For example, the manuscript in the India Office dated A.D. 1428 has folios measuring 114 by 34 inches. Also, the more blue there is in the background of the paintings, the more likely the manuscript is to come from the sixteenth century or later, although again this criterion is not absolutely certain ; for blue is used in moderate degree in some of our oldest dated manuscripts. But the fact that the oldest paper specimens generally have a brick-red back-ground makes it difficult to photograph them successfully without equipment for panchromatic work.
The introduction of paper for a writing surface produced a marked change in the character of the illustrations. In the first place the artist was able to get a larger working space than he had on the palm-leaf folios. In the case of the latter, the size of the picture was inevitably constricted by the natural width of the palm leaf : the miniatures from Cambay executed in the year A.D. 1127 measure 3 x 7/8 by 2x} or 2 x 5/8 inches 26 ; those from Mewar, now at Boston, are a little smaller27 But the paper miniatures are all larger. As time went on and the size of the folios was enlarged, the available surface for the paintings was correspondingly increased. So too the shape of the miniatures was generally different. In the palm-leaf specimens the greater dimension is the horizontal ; in the paper it is usually the vertical.
Paper not only offered a larger area for the painting but also provided a surface susceptible to finer workmanship. The broad, simple
26 Brown (1). 27 Coomaraswamy (4), (5).