Treasures of Jaina Bhandaras

Author(s): Umakant P Shah, Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Treasures of Jaina Bhandaras
Animals are depicted in various actions, a few small shrubs and plants with flowers occasionally fill the foreground. Men wear three-peaked crowns, or turbans high and somewhat conical, with a feather-like attachment in front, and long jāmās, usually reaching somewhat below the knees but occasionally covering the legs completely; the jāmās are tied with a sash at the waist. Men have long thin whiskers widening fan-shaped on the cheeks and long moustaches, thinner and curved and pointed at the ends. Ladies either wear a long petti-coat (ghaghrā) and short-sleeved coli leaving the stomach region bare, and an odhani, with either a long plated braid of hair on the back, or the hair tied into a knot at the back of the head. Body colour is usually dull light pinkish, jāmās are often in red and sometimes in yellow, green, etc. Ladies often wear red lower garments. The colours used are red, green, yellow, grey, black, brown, white, pink, saffron etc. and are not very bright as in the case of the Candarasa copied in Poona referred to above. It is interesting to note that ladies sometimes have a horizontal doublelined tripunda-like red tilaka mark running across the forehead or have a circular red dot-like tilaka, 105
Mānatunga-Mänavati-Rāsa is another Jaina story which became popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A manuscript of this work (Cat. no. 506) also preserved in Dosabhai Abhechand collection, Bhavnagar, has but few illustrations sometimes two on one page. One interesting miniature is of a Jogana (a Yogini, an ascetic lady), a wandering nun, illustrated in flg. 153. Fig. 154 shows a warrior, with a sword, shield and a lance, riding on a dark-brown running horse, and wearing a greyish jāmā and turban. Men wear long jāmās and turbans (fig. 155). Figures are long and not stunted as in the Candarasa from Bhavnagar. Body complexion of males and females is reddish. The drawings are smooth and neatly done without any background colour. The colours used in these miniatures are red, light blue, grey, yellow, black, violet, pink, light green and white. The
105Of different styles in Saurashtra so far known, one might also note the paintings of a Samgrahani-sutra, painted at Wadhwan in 1638 A. D., from Sri Motichand Khajanchi collection, now in the National Museum, New Delhi. More Documents of Jaina Paintings, figs. 67-68 p. 23; Miniature Paintings from Shri Motichand Khajanchi collection, figs. 97-98.
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