Jaina Monuments and Places First Class Importance

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

Page 56

JAINA MONUMENTS
the least iemai kable feature of this manuscript is that here we have examples of the earliest portraiture in Indian art, apart from representations of divine or semi-divine beings. These are portrails of Hēma Chandra, a Jaina apostle, and King Kumārapāla. Beller known are the illustrated inanuscripts on paper of the fifteenth century.
THREE PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT OF JAINA
PAINTING.
A close examination of available matcals cnables us lo distinguish three styles of Jaina painting :
1.
the earliest style – the style of the period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, which may be called the archaic period of Jaina art.
the style of the period of contact with Mughal art extenuing roughly from the cnd of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century:
the style of the late seventeenth century, when Jaina art comes under the influence of Rajput art, and of the eighteenth century, when it completely merges into contemporary decadent Rajput art.
The head-type varies in each of the three periods of Jaina art. First, we have the archaic profiles of the early art, then the clearcut chiselled features of the Mughal period and finally the fine oval countenances of the women and the whiskered faces of the men of the period of Rajput ascendancy.