Department of Fine Arts, Post Graduate Govt. College for Girls, Indian Painting B.A. II Dr. O. P. Parameswaran, Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Post Graduate Govt. College for Girls, Sector-11, Chandigarh.

HISTORY OF INDIAN PAINTING '1439 Kalpa Sutra Manuscript Paintings', Western Indian Painting,Jainism

'1439 Kalpa Sutra Manuscript Paintings', Western India, Jainism.

The western Indian tradition of manuscript painting spread over the Gujarat and Rajasthan area. It evolved steadily from the 11th to 16th centuries, despite iconoclastic depredations caused by the Muslim invaders

Contributing significantly to the development of the Rajasthani School, it also shaped the vocabulary of visual expression of Indian miniature painting at a formative stage. The main patrons of these paintings were the Jain community.

Since wealthy Jainas commissioned, the manuscripts to acquire spiritual merit they did not give prime importance to aesthetic value. Though paper seems to have used for manuscripts in western India as early as the 12th century, it was not commonly employed for illustration until late in the 14th century.

With the general introduction of paper the relation of length to width of the page changed. The paper page allowed a larger field for painting and more ambitious composition, and the miniatures began to be framed in rich illumination. One of the import texts used for manuscripts at this period was the Kalpasutra which is about the life of Mahavira and other Jainas.

Painting: '1439 Kalpasutra' At the fort of Mandu in the reign of Mahmud was written and illustrated a paper manuscript of the Kalpasutra dated AD. 1439, now in the national museum New Delhi.

It is of the usual oblong format, and the text is written in -gold on a crimson ground and divided into four fields of writing by splendid floral vertical borders and the miniatures. The latter are painted on a red ground. The line is more evenly flowing, more careful than the quick and spidery line of the standard style. The colour is especially fine and used, for more than formal effect.

The female figures, that of Trisala, for example, the wife of Siddhartha and mother of Mahavira, are an excuse for delicious pattern making, the colours and design of bodice and skirt clear to see under the transparent orhni or stole which passes over the head and stands out stiffly like a wing. Though it is all in the western India tradition, here it is used with a difference and with more than decorative meaning.

Characteristics of Western Indian style: Other Characteristics of the western Indian style are as follows. Painting is in a single plane, figures on a red or ultramontane background.' Architectural elements are reduced into essentials

The hieratic little figures and some times animals as well as household furniture are little more than pictograms occupying boxes in a geometrical composition. In the best examples the line reminiscent of some Contemporary sculptures in its sharp angularity is extraordinarily assured

Mannerism includes the extension of the further eye, the swelling torso, and a particularly tortuous arrangement of the legs in some seated figures.

At its best, the western Indian style, particularly in its attractive use of bold textile patterns are highly distinctive, the general effect of liveliness and gaiety curiously at odds with the seriousness of the subject matter and (sad and serious) somber tenets of the Jain religion.