Book Title: Jain Journal 1981 10
Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

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Page 11
________________ 48 their unforgiving energy in martial activities, the Greek sculptors brought into dimension the glory of Apollo, the mythical heroes, the warriors in exultation or defeat and the smooth curves of Aphrodite who may evoke passion or sublime love (Aphrodite Urania) and the Chinese yearned for the enchantment of the Mahayana paradise and the eternal sublimity of landscapes distinguished by mountains, valleys and rivers what at times appear to be reposeful and out of the world. In a like manner the art in India essentially conveys a deep appreciation of beauty wherein are enthroned the ideals of divinity and the timeless grandeur of soul that are capable in achieving knowledge in its perfection in our manifestingly transient world and existence. Being constant to the purport of iconographic details and motifs the sculptors and painters in the country could visualise in all times the beauty of woman symbolising as it were the promise of kindest light where it is difficult to tell a mortal from the celestials. This is the perspective where the art of the Nirgrantha envisages the daughters of heaven and the female devotees and attendants of the Tirthankaras. The feeling is also captured at times by female dancers whose purity and ecstasy softly gleam on white marbles as their blushes and seductive grace are best remembered on illuminated folios of manuscripts of scriptural texts. Such representation of feminine grace in Jaina art visibly contrasts with the austerity and unshaken discipline of the meditating Tirthankaras either seated in padmāsana or standing in kayotsarga pose. Herein one may discover a reality or to define it further, an impression with regard to the beauty of the world side by side with the glory of eternal life in its physical and ethereal aspects and ultimately the culminating plane for the soul in its ascent as it has been defined by the journey of the Kevalin. The feeling of absolute realisation and equipoise as conveyed by the Jinas transcends the light of a perfect calm that brings in its fold all the joys, sufferings and tremors of life and the visual world with the promise of an eternal bliss of a silent glory. The celestial women have been treated by the artists with a deep tone of inner understanding a kind of which in a limited sense resting on a much different theme could dawn upon the Western celebrities like Giorgione and Edouard Manet many centuries after. Giorgione in his famed painting Concert Champetre and Edouard Manet in his revolutionising masterpiece The Luncheon on the Grass have defined a wall of indifference between the ripe beauty of woman divested of garments and well-dressed males that will appear in a way so elementary in the expression of Jaina art where youthful ladies as goddesses or as other daughters of heaven viz. the yaksts, the apsaras and the surasundaris appear before a perspective where the knowledge of the atoms that belies the piquancy and sorrows of the transient existence communicates an eternal truth, the message of liberation from rebirth. The composition Jain Education International JAIN JOURNAL For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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