The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

WALL-PAINTINGS AND MINIATURES 343
Manneristic exaggeration of the canon of the
feminine form, as seen at Ajanta, and by an even
more marked employment of entirely abstract
plastic shading.
Among the few examples of ancient wallpainting
in South India are the decorations of
the Rajrajesvara temple at Tanjore. 3 The figures
in this cycle are devoted to the life of Sundaramurtiswami
in a completely Chola style, in
which the poses, gestures, and facial types are
the pictorial equivalents of the great South
Indian bronze images.
Although no example of wall-painting
has
survived from the Bengal Valley, a very few
surviving specimens of illuminated manuscripts
give us some idea of the type of painting that
flourished under the Pala Dynasty. 4 The illustrations
consist of scenes from the life of
Buddha and portrayals of Buddhist divinities.
The latter, like the subject-matter of Pala
sculpture, is completely Tantric. Although the
technique and compositions frequently reveal a
perpetuation of classical prototypes, the difference
between these paintings and their Gupta
models is the same as that between Pala
sculpture and the great masterpieces of the
fourth and fifth centuries. The drawing has
become more delicate and nervous in outline.
There is the same combination of elegance and
sensuality, together with a loss of really plastic
modelling, that distinguishes the late Buddhist
statuary of the Ganges Valley. These Pala
manuscripts are perhaps chiefly important as
the ultimate prototypes of all later painting in
Nepal and Tibet.
If the Pala paintings are the final development
of what Taranatha described as the ancient
Eastern school of painting, the final evolution of
his 'Western school' is to be found in the Jain
painting at Gujarat. These illuminations, which
date from the thirteenth century and later, are
all of them illustrations of Jain texts, such as the
life of Mahavira, or the Kalpa sutra. Invariably,
these pictures are as stereotyped as the texts
275. Jain manuscript from Gujarat.
Washington, D.C., Freer Gallery ofArt
they illustrate [275]. They consist of square
panels set into pages of text, and the compositions
are borrowed from traditional arrangements
in earlier Jain or Buddhist art. The Jain
manuscripts generally are characterized by their
brilliant, even jewel-like colour, and by the type
of accomplished linear decoration of every element
in the drawing. The individual figures
invariably are drawn in three-quarters view,
with long pointed noses and protruding eyes.
The curious mannerism whereby the cheek
farther removed from the spectator is made to
project almost beyond the nose is only an
exaggeration of a formula already seen at
Ellura. Although many individual Jain manuscripts
have a certain charm in their wiry drawing
and brilliant colouring, there is a monotony
of execution that is paralleled in the elegant but
entirely mechanical Jain figure sculpture of
Mount Abu.
The final chapter of Indian painting is in the
work of the Rajput schools. Rajput painting is
the work of artists attached to the princely