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ART AND ARCHITECTURE
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by the existing works, the finest of which is a group of twelve nuns or female Jaina ascetics.
The art of mural painting continued to flourish with the Jainas even in later times, and on the walls of the Jaina Matha at Śravanabelgol there are serval examples of how the chief tenets, scens from Jaina puranas or lives of the Tirthankaras and even secular subjects like a south Indian king's court were handled skilfully by the Jaina artistis. It has been said that the beauty of the Jaina painting lies in the interpretation of form by means of a clear cut definition, regular and decided through the convention of pure line. "And about their decorative painting," Eric Schroeder says, "Nothing could be more admirable as ornamental pattern than Painting". It may also be noted that a number of comparatively recent Jaina temples in the country are also adorned with painting on their walls and ceilings.
Miniature painting in the form of illustrated manuscripts which sometimes contain whole stories worked out in pictures, was greatly developed by the Jainas during the medieval period. According to Dr. Coomaraswamy medieval Indian art has nothing finer to show than these Jaina paintings, only the early Rajput pictures of rāgas and raginis being of equal aestheic rank, that the tradition of Jaina painting is recovered in manuscripts of the 13th and subsequent centuries, and that it is very evident that both in composition and style the pictures belong to an ancient and faithfully preserved tradition.
Quite a good number of such illustrated manuscripts, some of which are of excellent artistic merit, are extent in the different Sastra-bhaṇḍāras (manuscript-libraries) of the Jainas. Besides these there are several specimens of beautifully illustrated vijñapti-patras (Invitation rolls) and other pieces of Jaina miniature painting.
