More Documents of Jaina and Gujarati Paintings

Author(s): Umakant P Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 19

zag manner (fig. 23). This page is preserved in the collections of late Shri Rajendrasimhji Simghi of Calcutta.
The palm-leaf MS. of Santinatha-caritra, also from Pravartaka Sri Kantivijayaji's collection at Broda, (figs. 19, 20, 21), is less intersting. Written in Sarhvat 1412-1356 A. D. at Anahilwäd-Patan, it demonstrates the beginning of the style of what had been once called the fifteenth century Gujarati style illustrated by the Vasanta-vilāsa scroll. A Hindu manuscript of about the same age, painted also at Patan is reported to have been acquired sometime back by the Bharata Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, and a page from it, in Sri Kanodia's collection, was exhibited in the National Museum on the occassion of the International Sanskrit Conference in 1972. This manuscript is dated in V. S. 1443-1386 A. D. Especially important however is the small sized palm-leaf manuscript of the Kalpa-sutra, from Ujamphoi collection in Ahmedabad, (already publi shed) datable in c. A. D.1370. For neat and fine workmanship it has few parallels.
This style, already fully developed in at least the latter half of the fourteenth century A. D., was very popular in the whole of Gujarat in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and now with several documents giving place-names discovered, it might be designated as Anahilwäd-Patan style or Gujarati style. The style became so popular throughout Western India and even in Mewaḍ that we have, as a result, a beautiful manuscript of Supärsvandtha-caritra painted in 1481 V. S. 1424 A. D. at Devakulapā faka (modern Delvada) near Ekalingji. This has been published by Muni Punyavijayaji in the Vijaya Vallabh suri Smaraka Grantha.27
That the style was not confined to Jaina theological works and manuscripts is demonstrated by the recently acquired Hindu text of some hymns by the Bharata Kala Bhavan, noted above, by the secular Vasanta Vildsa scroll published by N. C. Mehta** and later by Norman Brown, by a painting of Kamadeva from a Ms. of Rati-rahasya publised in Jaina Citrakalpadrum, Vol. 1" and by Balagopala stuti published by W. Norman Brown and Devi-Mahatmya publised by M. R. Majumdar.
30
One more non-Jaina work in this style, assignable to c. 1400-1420 A. D. and illustrating themes from Hindu mythology, mainly from the Mahabharata, has been
26. Moti Chandra, Jaina Miniature Paintings from Western India, figs. 54-58, p. 33.
27. Vijaya Vallabha Süri Smaraka Grantha, pp. 176-181 and plates. Muni Punyavijaya, graft हस्तलिखित पोथीमांना रंगीन चित्रो
28. Mehta, N. C., Studies in Indian Painting chp. II.
29. Jaina Citrakalpadruma, I. p. 85, fig. 155.
Moti Chandra, Jaina Miniature etc., fig. 174, p. 44.
30. W. Norman Brown, Early Vaisnava Miniature Paintings from Western India, Eastern Art, Vol. II (1930), pp. 167-206. Majmudar M, R., Some Illustrated Mss. of the Gujarati School of Painting, Proceedings, VII All India Oriental Conference, (Baroda, 1933), pp. 827-835; A 15th Century Gitagovinda with Gujarati Paintings, Bombay University Journal, May, 1937: Earliest DeviMiniatures with special reference to śakti-worship in Gujarat, Journal of the Indian (1038); A Newly discovered Gita Govinda Ms. from Gujarat,