More Documents of Jaina and Gujarati Paintings

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

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Fig. 33, from folio 17a of this manuscript, (enlarged and reproduced here), is divided into two panels, the upper one showing the Mother of Mahāvīra sitting on a stool and attended upon by a lady, at her back, holding a fan-like object, and by two ladies in the front. The mother is shown in a dejected pensive mood as the foetus of Mahāvīra in her womb did not move. In the lower panel, she is again shown, but in a happy mood, after the child, taking cognizance of the mother's grief, moved. The lady behind the mother is waving a fly-whisk.
Circular tilaka-marks on foreheads, the various designs of garments and the tapestry hanging overhead (candaravo-vandanavāra) may be noted. The painting shows all the characteristics of the fifteenth century painting fully developed. Lower garments of ladies show pointed ends comparable with such sāri-ends in the Jaunapur Kalpasūtra. Though the treatment is different, the close relation of the Jaunapur manuscript with Western Indian or Gujarati style is obvious. Several compositions in this manuscript are in the manner of such compositions, in single miniatures, of the Kalpa-sūtra dated Samvat 1403 from Muni Sri Punyavijaya's collection. The attempt to regard such sāri-ends, or the baloon-like scarf at the back of heads of ladies, or the way of showing the bed-spread, as peculiarities of the U. P. style is not convincing. Figures of wives of Vastupāla and Tejapāla, set up in the early thirteenth century in the Lūņavasahi, Delvādā, Mount Abu, and the figures of ladies on two architectural pieces from Ladol, North Gujarat, (dated in V. S. 1356=1300 A. D.) now in the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay (fig. 27), show such baloon-like scarf. The mode of representation of bed-spread is also obtained in other manuscripts from Gujarāt and Rājasthān, e. g. in a Kalpa-sūtra dated in V. S. 1474=1417 A. D. now in the National Museum, New Delhi. So far as fine brush work and bright colour scheme are concerned, this manuscript in the Oriental Institute, Baroda, can be compared with the Prince of Wales Museum Kalpa-sútra, assigned by Basil Gray and Douglas Barrett to c. 1400 A.D.
There is an undated Kalpa-sūtra in Sri Atmārāmji Jõānamandir, Baroda, which in format as well as in the style of paintings, is closely similar to the Kalpa-sūtra dated in 1428 A.D., preserved in the India Office Library, published by Coomara. swamy, Brown and Rawson.33
Rajasthāni painting has its roots, rather deep, in such earlier paintings and though it is influenced by the Moghul Court, and Persian paintings, in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, yet it is not evolved from the Moghul School.
Comparable with the Campaner scroll, the Vasanta Vilasa scroll and the Suparśvanātha-caritra, is a beautiful canvas pața, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It is dated in the year V. S. 1504=1447 A. D. and contains some excellent paintings of divinities, animals and birds like the elephant and the peacock, lake, palmtrees, plaintain tree, weeping-wilow-like trees etc. Known as Jaitra-Yamin or as Vijay
33. First published by Coomarswamy, A. K., Notes on Jaina Art, Journal of Indian Art, July 1914; also see Philiphs S. Rawson, Indian Painting, Paris and New York 1961, plate 89 and p. 88.
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