Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 480

FARTHER-EYE IN THE EAST INDIAN AND NEPALESE PAINTINGS 445
from a manuscript (acc. no. 5488, fig. 8) supports the above view.
Now from the above scenes we find that the Bengali painters retained their formula of the elongated and half-closed type even in the representation of the farther eye; this was distinguished from the broad and staring type found from the western Indian manuscript illustrations. The same Bengali tradition progressed to Magadha as seen in the illustrated manuscript of Kāla cakra tantra from the Cambridge University Collection(see below).
We may refer to certain later manuscripts in the collection of Bharat Kala Bhavan; these are mainly from the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries Nepal, where the eastern Indian tradition was somewhat preserved. The Devi Māhātmya (acc. nos. 4895, 489799) has a number of illustrations. These show at least three main types of treatments: (a) the full faces (acc. no. 5905): these have wooden expressions and resemble the other Himalayan sub-styles in this type of representations, presumably based on the decadent sculpture of the stereotyped tradition, (b) the rare instances of the strict profile faces without the farther eyes: these appear only in two compositions, showing the drooping and dead faces of the killed Rākşasas (acc. nos. 4896 and 4901). These treatments suggest the embroyonic "Rajasthani'' types; moreover the body colour of the Rākşasas is darkish and naturalistic as compared with the idealised complexions of the Devī and other personages in the scenes, and (c) the usual type of the three fourth profile
S. K. Saraswati informs me that main panels having the farther eyed faces are known from a manuscript of Asta-sahasriká Prajnaparamitê dated in the fifth regnal year of a Mahi Pāla; the manuscript is now in the collection of the Cambridge University Library. S. K. Saraswati has attributed this to Mahi Pāla II's reign on stylistic grounds and thus dates it in ca. 1060-70 A.D. This is borne out by the use of the farther eye which is a later characteristic. He informs that the manuscript was published by A. Foucher in his Les Etudes Sur L'Iconographic Buddhique: however I could not get a copy of the same. Pratapaditya Pal, loc. cit.