More Documents of Jaina and Gujarati Paintings

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

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light yellow body colour and red face. The lady also has yellow complexion, and wears red colī and lower garment.
The painting on the right has red background, the other one on the left half of the folio is with blue background. Each of these paintings illustrates the verse written on top.
The page can be assigned to c. 1580-1600 A. D. from its format, script etc. The paintings clearly belong to the Gujarāti group referred to above. Treatment of figures of ladies as also of their dress has its parallels in the Uttarādhyayana dated 1591, and the Mātar Sangrahani of 1583. The discovery of this page suggests the possibility of more secular paintings coming to light from Jaina collections. The style was not confined to religious texts and must have been popular in Gujarāt.
Shrimati Sarayu Doshi has discovered a profusely illustrated Digambara Jaina Adipurāņa from Jaipur. The paintings are in two styles, one of which resembles the Mātar Sangrahani style. Unfortunately the Ms. bears no date, but seems not far removed from the Samgrahani painted by Govinda. It is not known where this Jaipur MS. was written and painted. Perhaps one of the painters belonged to the new school of sixteenth century in Gujarät.
Mention may be made of the paintings of Rāga Dhanasri and others in the Sarabhai Nawab's collection, referred to by B. Gray42 and published by Nawab in his Master-pieces of Kalpa Sūtra Paintings, plates H-J. These have been assigned by Gray to Gujarat, early sixteenth century. He has rightly noted their relation to the Bhāgavata paintings published by M. R. Majmudar. Recently the Baroda Museum has acquired three Rāgamālā paintings of one set, a painting from these bears a date, V. S. 1665=1608 A. D. The style of these paintings is allied to the above style.
It does not seem desirable to date some of the abovementioned paintings on the basis of the occurence or otherwise of the pointed jāmās which are taken as innovations of Akbar's court from some outside source. 43 An argument in favour of Gray and Barrett's views on the problem is the fact that such jāmās are popular in temples of the Pusțisampradāya, founded by Vallabhācārya, with its two principal seats at Nathadwārā and Kāňkroli in Mewad. The sect would not have preferred the purely Moghul court dress for the deity in its sanctums. The whole argument based on cākadāra jāmās should not be pressed too far. A garment with pointed ends is found on a yakşī in the Mathura Museum, assignable to c. first century B. C. or A. D. Perhaps introduced by sakas and or Kuşāņas or even earlier it might have been adopted in Indian dress several centuries before Akbar.
Incidentally we might refer here to the argument about balloon-shaped sāris. In the Māndu Kalpa-sūtra of 1439 A. D. (now in the National Museum), as noted by Khandalawala and Moti Chandra, "the odhanī when covering the back of the coiffure, stands
42. Basil Gray in The art of India and Pakistan, p. 106, no. 385 (415) 43. Compare, for example, Khandalawala's view noted in New Documents of Indian Painting, Bulletin of the Prince of Wales Museum, No. 7, pp. 26-27.
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