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BOOK REVIEW
NEW DOCUMENTS OF JAINA PAINTING by Dr. Moti Chandra & Dr. Umakant P. Shah, Shri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya, Bombay, 1975: Price Rs. 125 £8: $18.
Whenever in our life we find a book of scintillating importance representing a store of knowledge our gratitude knows no bounds. That such a publication can make a close communion with the subject retaining its essential image as well has been evinced by the book of Dr. Umakant P. Shah and the Late lamented Padma Bhushan Dr. Moti Chandra. Published in accordance with an idea conceived at the time of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of Shri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya the book entitled New Documents of Jaina Painting has given a series of glimpses of the multi-hued treasures of Jaina art belonging to the Jñana-Bhandḍāras, a legacy of centuries. With its charming repertory of illustrations both in colour and in black-and-white the book has given us access to the variogated beauty of ancient art and mythology. The stories of the Kalaka Katha, the Uttaradhyayana-Sutra, the CandraprabhaCaritra, the Kalpa-Sutra, the Santinatha-Caritra and other texts are as if beaming from the folios. Mounted on apple-red back-ground the reproductions of polychrome paintings has the authenticity and lustre of the originals. Apart from the experience and delight conveyed by the illustrations every page of the Introduction is replete with such learned observations which are obviously resultant of a prolonged dedication to the subject and an enquiry generated by comprehension and genius. Beginning from the land-mark represented by the celebrated council at Valabhi in circa 453 A.D. the book has made an elegant survey of the successive epochs of the vocabulary of Jaina painting which imbibed a new stimulus in the mediaeval period when the school of Western Indian painting blossomed in a liberal atmosphere. The changing formalities of the aesthetic order of the Western Indian painting as evident in the treatment and in the selection of subjects during centuries
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