Jain Journal 1970 04

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

Page 20

Aesthetics and Relationships of Jaina Painting
A. K. COOMARASWAMY
The Jaina manuscripts, although the illuminated examples are far from common, constitute the chief exception to the general rule that Indian mansuscripts are not illustrated. It will be seen, however, that there is no attempt at an organic relationship of text and illustration, such as always appear in Persian manuscripts. The Jaina miniature is simply a square or oblong picture that looks as if it had been pasted on to the page, rather than designed as a part of it. This may not arise so much from the fact that the painter and writer must have separate persons, as from the fact that Indian painting was highly developed long before the sacred books were habitually preserved in written form.
We are familiar with the striking continuity of the traditions of Buddhist painting to give only one example, compare the White Elephant Gift (Vessantara Jātaka) as represented at Degaldoruva in Ceylon (18th century; my Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, frontispiece) with the same subject represented at Miran (2nd Century; Stein, Desert Cathay, figure 147); the latter example, and indeed both, must reflect still older Indian models. Just the same must be true of the illustrations to the lives of the Jinas probably nothing in the composition is due to the 15th century painter, just as nothing in the text is due to the 15th century scribe. This does not mean, of course, that the Jaina art has not varied in style, nor that the details of costume, architecture and manners may not largely reflect the painters own environment, nor that there is no diversity of merit in the mediaeval works; it means that we had before us Jaina paintings of the 15th century, or even earlier, we should most likely recognise in then compositions almost identical, as such, with many of those in the 15th century books and later.
Probably the illustrations to the Kalakacāryakathanakam have not so old an ancestry. The story itself is of later origin, and I should suppose the compositions may not go further back than the 10th century. On the whole, they are decidedly less formal and more anecdotal than those accompanying the lives of the Jinas.
In any case, we have before us a purely Indian art derived, like Rajput and Orissa painting and the late Buddhist art of Ceylon from