Jaina Monuments and Places First Class Importance

Author(s): T N Ramchandran
Publisher: Veer Shasan Sangh Calcutta

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JAINA MONUMENTS
PAINTING:
Very few early remains of Jaina painting ci importance have survived. The remains of frescoes in the Jogimare cave in Ramgarh hills in Orissa may be of Jaina origin. There are traces of paintings in one of the Jaina caves near Bhuvaneshwar in Orissa. The Sittannaväsal frescoes to be discussed later are Jaina and are related to the Ajanta and Bagli frescoes in technique but they have no relationship to the miniature paintings of Jaina manuscripts. There is no apparent foreign element in Jaina sculpture. Their achievements in architecture and sculpture in a later period excite wonder by their beauty, technical perfection and magnificent ornamentation. That such a race of artists should produce great works in painting was to be expected.
According to the custom prevailing among the Jainas "to carve ceilings with the principal incidents in the life of the Jina, to whom the main shrine or a corridor cell is dedicated," the ceiling of the mukha-mandapa and the sangita-manḍapa in the Trailokyanätha or Vardhamana temple at Tiruparuttikunram bears a series of coloured paintings which, as has already been remarked, illustrate the life stories of three out of the twenty-four Jaina Tirthankaras.
Though art-critics have much to say against this practice of "colour-washing" from the point of art, as convention plays a great part in such paintings, it has nevertheless to be welcomed as it gives an easy means of reading the life-stories of the gods of the Jaina pantheon without being forced to listen to narratives from the people who may know them or to look into the Jaina puranas, the majority of which are unfortunately still in manuscript form. This practice of colour washing and painting, which Mrs. Stevenson calls "the modern craze", has evidently taken the place of the craze for stone carvings which was customary from the early centuries, beginning perhaps with the Pallava king