Jaina Art and Architecture Vol 03

Author(s): A Ghosh
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 90

(PART VE
PAINTINGS AND WOOD-CARVINGS
executed--the spaces reserved for them are left blank. Its scheme of illustrations, like the other manuscripts of the northern tradition, contains numerous illustrations of varying formats. While most of its folios have paintings on the left and/or the right side of the folio, others have the paintings placed in interesting arrangements which show an integrated relationship between the textual and the painted matter and reveal an approach like that noticed in Persian manuscripts (col. ill. 36A and plates 282A, B, 283A). The paintings appear to be composed in small panels added to one another (plate 282B).
Stylistically, the folios of this manuscript fall into three groups. The first group comprises folios 1-39, the second folios 40-160 and the last folios 161-77. The second and the third groups possibly represent an attempt to complete the illustrations at some date subsequent to the first group.
The style of painting in the first group conforms to the northern idiom except that its colour-scheme is more extensive than before and the drawing is becoming incrcasingly stylized and mannered. The figures are elongated and their faces are more angular (col.-ill. 36A, plate 282A). In the male figure the faces have a wash of colour along their jaw-line suggesting the down of the beard (plate 282A). They wear short dhotis, an uttariya draped in an unusually low loop and a tall tiara. Only occasionally are they attired in a jāmā and high boots. The female figures are dressed in sāris with the pleats projecting outwards and the end passed diagonally across the chest in a flaring band. The textiles, when not plain, have a striped or a crude pattern. The landscape is imaginatively handled (col.-ill. 36B). For example, the trees are shown with creepers entwined around their trunks and birds or monkeys seated in their foliage: their leaves are veined in red or yellow and are generally arranged in rows or in a circular pattern. The forms for mountains have usually some variation on the basic formula of slabs with voluted tips but sometimes are reduced to circular boulders piled one upon another or stretched along a plain. Clouds are enlivened with lightening. For the first time in this tradition panels of pure landscape are introduced. The architecture of the pavilion shows a superstructure which consists of a low pitched roof and wall with latticework,
It is apparent from these illustrations that within the definitions of the northern tradition, the style of this manuscript is distinguished by vitality and inventiveness. What is even more intereresting is that certain of its features can be aligned with the style of the controversial Caura-pañcâsika group of
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