Book Title: Jain Journal 1970 04
Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

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Page 7
________________ APRIL, 1970 201 exist in Italy at Florence. In the United, States examples appear notably at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where there is the best assemblage outside of Jaina libraries in India, at the Free Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Art Museum in Detroit. There are also many privately owned paintings. Thus, it is evident that the materials, though not abundant in Western lands, are sufficient to remove any excuse for so sweeping a statement as that of M. Blochet, and the importance of the style is such that no account of painting in India can nowadays afford to ignore it. The literature on the subject is not large. The first discussion was an account by Huttemann of the Kalpa Sūtra manuscript owned by the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, published in 1913, followed a year later by an article by Coomaraswamy, and a description in book form in 1924 of the specimens owned by that time by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. N.C. Mehta published examples from a secular manuscript in 1925 and 1927 ; and in 1928 (although dated 1927) Ajit Ghose published two important articles on the style of this art. In 1929 I myself published the oldest specimens of this style so far discovered, and in 1930 Doctor Coomaraswamy published a manuscript newly acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and I another. A few other references of articles have appeared?. No one but myself has yet endeavored to outline, even tentatively, the history of this art, and even I have done so only briefly ; but I feel that, with the materials now accessible in the combined articles published, manuscripts available but not published, and the photographs I made during the winter of 1928-29 in Jaina bhaņdāras, it is possible to sketch in general lines and illustrate the course of development of the art, provisionally offering certain stages in the history. The time limitations of this medieval Western Indian miniature painting are from the beginning of the style-our earliest dated examples come from Vikrama Samvat 1184 (A.D. 1127)--to about the end of the sixteenth century or early part of the seventeenth, by which time the significant history of the style is over. Examples follow in the late seventeenth century, possibly even in the eighteenth, but western India in general, the Svetambara Jainas included, now uses styles seriously affected by the Rajput-Mughal complex, finally succumbing to the latter. At this time come the second and third periods of Jaina painting, as 6 For descriptions of specimens acquired up to 1924, see Coomaraswamy (2). ? For titles by these authors, see bibliography above. Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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