More Documents of Jaina and Gujarati Paintings

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

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now in the Baroda Museum, and first published by W. Norman Brown in his Miniatures of the Uttaradhyayana Satra, also later discussed by Ananda Krishna, Khandala. wala and others.
It will be quite obvious that the miniatures of this Rajaprasṇīya are in the same style as those of the Samgrahani Sutra painted at Mätar in A. D. 1583 (figs. 51, 52, 53, 54) and the Uttaradhyayana Sutra dated 1591 A. D. (figs. 41, 42, 43). Both the Samgrahani and the Uttaradhyayana represent a new style with typical profiles and eyes etc., but while we know definitely that one was painted in Matar, Kheda district, Gujarat, we do not know where the other MS. dated 1591 A. D. was painted. However, when Norman Brown first published it, it was known to have originally belonged to a Jaina collection in Surat.
Even though there is no colophon at the end of this Rajapraśṇiya giving the place where it was written and painted, it is interesting to note that Muni Punya. vijaya was presented this manuscript from a Jaina collection in Petlad, which again is in Central Gujarat and not very far from Matar. We would, therefore, be inclined to think that this new style represented in these three manuscripts was popular in Gujarat of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and perhaps for some more decades at least.
The Bhagavata Datamaskandha (i. e. Book X) of 1610-11 A. D., painted by Govinda, son of Narada published by M. R. Majumdar, se shows the same style. Some pages in this style and from the same MS. possibly are in the collections of the Bharata Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, along with folios from another Bhagavata MS. painted at Ahmedabad in 1598 A. D. A page from Bhagavata dated 1598 A. D. and another from Bhagavata painted in 1610 A. D., acquired by the Oriental Institute, Baroda, are illustrated in fig. 49, 50 respectively. Some more paintings of the Bhagavata chp. X painted by Govinda in 1610-11 A. D. are in U.S.A. in the Earnest C. and Jane Werner Watson Collection etc. 37
Of this sixteenth century style of Gujarat, another set of Bhagavata paintings existed, of which a few pages are in the collection of Shri Jagdish Mittal (HyderabadA. P.) (fig. 61) and in U.S.A. in the Binny collection.
Recently I was shown by a dealer from Jaipur a page of a Balagopala-Stuti in exactly the same style as the Uttaradhyayana of 1591 A. D., the Rajapraśniya of Muni Punyavijayaji collection referred to above (now in the L. D. Institute of Indology; Ahmedabad) and the Bhagavata Datamaskandha MSS. dated in 1610 and 1598 A. D.
35. Ananda Krishna, A Stylistic study of the Uttaradhyayana sutra Ms. dated 1591 in the Museum and Picture Gallery, Baroda, Bulletin of the Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, vol. XV (1962), pp. 1-12 and plates; also see, Karl Khandalawala, Leaves from Rajasthan, Marg, vol. IV no. 3. (Dipawali, 1950), pp. 1-24 and plates.
36. Majmudar, M. R. "Two Illustrated MSS. of the Bhagavata Daśamaskandha" Lalit Kala, No. 8 (1960), pp. 47-54 & plates; "The Gujarati School of Painting & some newly discovered Vaisnava Miniatures", Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, vol. X (1940).
37. Cf. Indian Miniature Painting by Pramod Chandra, pl. 83, p. 52.
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