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JAINISM AND KARNATAKA CULTURE
those of Tirumalai (N. Arcnt). Smith says, the Jaina holy place at Tirumalai is a remarkable as possessing the remains of a set of wall and ceiling paintings ascribed, on the evidence of inscriptions, to the 11th cent. A.D. (E. I. ix, 229)”.180 Traces exist of still older paintings covered up by the existing works. But, with the exception of one, they are said to be purely conventional and of little artistic importance. That exception is a representation of twelve Jaina nuns who are white-robed. But they are not to be supposed that they are Svetămbara; for we have seen that such an order of Digambara sisterhood still exists in the Arcot District of whose antiquity, therefore, this is a valuable confirmation. 181
Apart from this mural painting, there was another kind of Jaina art which was particularly prevalent in Gujarāt, viz. the art of illustrating, with beautifnl pictures, manuscripts of not less artistic interest than they were of religious importance. Dr. Coomâraswāmy has observed that Mediaeval Indian art has nothing finer to show than these Jaina paintings : only the early Rājput pictures of rāgas and rāginis are of equal aesthetic rank. 182 A brief allusion to these therefore would not be a digression, especially as the subjects' dealt with are persons of vital interest to our history.
"The tradition of Jain painting," says Coomāraswāmy, "is recovered in manuscripts of the thirteenth and subsequent centuries. The text most frequently illustrated is the Kalpa Sūtra of Bhadrabāhu, containing the lives of the Jinas, most of the space being devoted to Mahāvira. There are also illustrated cosmologies and cosmological diagrams, and appended to the Kalpa Sutra there is usually to be found the edifying tale of Kālikācārya...... The pictures take the form of square panels of the full height of the page, occupying spaces left for the purpose: only in very rare cases is the whole page used. The
180 Smith, op. cit., p. 344. 181 Of. Thorston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, II, pp. 432.33. 182 Coomara Swamy, Introduction to Indian Art, p. 117,
