The Manuscript Painting Tradition

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Fine Arts Class XII (An Introduction to Indian Art Part II), Chapter 1.

Why are these paintings so small, and why is there writing on top?

Open a book of Indian miniatures and you will notice two odd things. The pictures are tiny, meant to be held in the hand, and many have a box of handwritten text sitting above or behind the scene. That is because these are not wall decorations. They are illustrated pages of books. A painter was asked to turn a verse into a picture, and the verse stayed on the page beside it. Once you see a miniature as "a poem translated into colour", most of this chapter falls into place.

The big idea: miniatures, manuscripts and folios

The word miniature is just a nickname that medieval paintings earned for their small size. They were viewed from close up, so artists packed them with fine detail. Walls of a patron's mansion were decorated with murals, so miniatures were never meant to be put up on walls.

A large share of miniatures are manuscript illustrations: pictorial translations of verses from epics, religious texts, literary classics, bardic poems and music treatises. The verses were handwritten in a clearly marked box at the top of the painting, and sometimes on the back of the page.

Why the colophon is the star page. It is the only part of a manuscript that behaves like a birth certificate. Because paintings are fragile and portable, colophon pages are often lost, and scholars must then guess the date and place from style. Paintings travelled as dowry gifts, as presents between kings and courtiers, and with pilgrims, monks, traders and professional narrators. So a Mewar painting may turn up in the Bundi collection, and style alone is not always a safe guide to origin.

Pause and predict: a loose folio is found with no colophon and no date. How would a scholar place it?

Check your answer: by comparing its style (line, colour, costume, architecture) with dated sets and by using circumstantial evidence. Undated sets are given a "hypothetical timeframe" on that basis, and new finds can force scholars to redraw the timeline.

The Chitrasutra: the rulebook behind it all

The Chitrasutra is a chapter of the third Khanda of the Vishnudharmottara Purana, a fifth century text. It is treated as a source book of Indian art, and of painting in particular. It lays down pratima lakshana, the canons of image making, and also covers techniques, tools, materials, the wall surface, perception, perspective and the three dimensional look of human figures. Artists read and followed these canons for centuries, which is why they became the basis of all later styles and schools.

Its six limbs of painting are a favourite match-the-column.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the six limbs belong to the Chitrasutra of the Vishnudharmottara Purana. In reality: the six limbs work like a checklist for looking at any picture, which is a good way to remember them. Ask in order: what does it look like, is it in proportion, what is felt, how is it arranged, does it resemble the subject, and how well is it painted.

The Western Indian and Jain School: how trade built a style

Cause and effect in one chain. Gujarat had important ports, so trade routes passed through it. Trade made merchants, traders and local chieftains rich. The merchant class was largely Jain, and it used its wealth to pay for books and paintings on Jain themes. That is why the Jain-themed part of the Western Indian School is called the Jain School of Painting. It is a sub-tradition defined by its subject matter, not a separate rival school.

The School's main centre was Gujarat, with southern Rajasthan and western parts of Central India as other centres.

Two views. For the exam: the Jain School is the Jain-themed part of the Western Indian School, and its patrons were largely Jain merchants. Another reading: older books called the whole style simply "Jain painting", but many scholars now prefer "Western Indian" because the same style of painting was also used for non-Jain literary works. The label follows the style and region, while "Jain" names the subject matter.

Why donated books were everywhere. Jain painting got a second push from shaastradaan, the donation of books. Giving illustrated texts to the libraries of monasteries, called bhandars (repositories), was celebrated as charity, righteousness and gratitude. So rich families kept ordering new copies, and Jains got the same text written in many copies, some lightly and some lavishly illustrated.

The fourteen dreams. When Trishala conceives Mahavir she dreams of fourteen objects: an elephant, a bull, a tiger, the goddess Shri, a kalash, a palanquin, a pond, a rivulet, fire, banners, garlands, a heap of jewels, the Sun and the moon. An astrologer tells her she will bear a son who will become either a sovereign king or a great saint and teacher. The scene is a regular in Kalpasutra folios.

How a Jain folio was built. The page was divided into sections with fixed spaces for writing and for painting. A small hole in the centre let a string pass through and fasten the pages together. Wooden covers called patlis protected the stack at the top and bottom. Early Jain painting was done on palm leaves, treated before use and written on with a sharp calligraphic tool. The leaf was so narrow that painting was at first mostly confined to the patlis, which were painted in bright colours with gods, goddesses and episodes from the lives of Jain acharyas. Paper arrived in the fourteenth century. The earliest surviving palm leaf manuscript from the western part of India dates back to the eleventh century.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: gold and lapis lazuli signal the wealth of Jain patrons. In reality: lapis lazuli was not found in India's own painting centres. It came from mines in what is now Afghanistan, which is why a blue made from it was a luxury and why using it generously was a public statement of wealth.

The golden century. The most creative phase of Jain painting was roughly 1350 to 1450. Paintings moved from severely iconic images to attractive landscape elements, figures in dance poses and musicians playing instruments, painted in the margins around the main episode. Beyond canonical texts, Jain painters also produced Tirthipatas, Mandalas and secular, non-canonical stories.

Pause and predict: a folio shows a Tirthankara's life scene in bright red, with thin wiry lines, a face with a projecting second eye, and a pointed arch behind. Which school is it?

Check your answer: the Jain (Western Indian) School. The extra eye, thin wiry lines and bright colour are its signature, and the pointed arch is a sign of the Sultans who ruled the region.

The indigenous or pre-Rajasthani style

While Jain patrons commissioned religious books, feudal lords, wealthy citizens and other patrons supported a parallel tradition in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It illustrated secular, religious and literary themes. This is the indigenous tradition of painting before the court styles of Rajasthan took shape and before Mughal influence arrived, so it is also called the pre-Mughal or pre-Rajasthani style.

Its works portray both Hindu and Jain subjects: the Mahapurana, Chaurpanchashika, the Aranyaka Parvan of the Mahabharata, the Bhagvata Purana, the Gita Govinda and a few others.

Why it matters. All these formal elements pass into the early Rajasthani painting of the seventeenth century. That is why this style is called the bridge between the Jain manuscripts and the Rajasthani court schools in the next chapter.

The Sultanate School: a style, not a school

After the late twelfth century, large parts of the north, east and west came under Sultanate dynasties from Central Asia, so Persian, Turkic and Afghan influence flowed in. A few Central Asian artists worked alongside local artists in courts such as Malwa, Gujarat and Jaunpur. The result is a hybrid of Persian features (colour palette, physiognomy, simplified landscape with decorative detail) and the indigenous pictorial style described above.

Why it is called a "style" and not a "school". It is a hybrid of two traditions that appears in several courts, rather than the court tradition of one kingdom, so it is described as a style with Persian influence.

The best example is the Nimatnama (Book of Delicacies), painted at Mandu during the reign of Nasir Shah Khalji (1500 to 1510 CE). It is a recipe book with a section on hunting and methods for preparing medicines, cosmetics, perfumes and directions for using them. Stories carrying Sufi ideas were also popular, and the Laurchanda paintings are an example of that genre.

The Pala School: the last great Buddhist art of India

The Pala period (750 CE to the mid twelfth century) saw the last great phase of Buddhist art in India. Monasteries such as Nalanda and Vikramsila were great centres of Buddhist learning. Manuscripts were illustrated there on palm leaves with Buddhist themes and images of Vajrayana Buddhist deities. These centres also had workshops for casting bronze images.

How Pala art travelled. Students and pilgrims from all over South East Asia came to these monasteries for education and religious instruction. They carried home bronzes and illustrated manuscripts as keepsakes. That is how Pala art reached Nepal, Tibet, Burma, Sri Lanka and Java.

The Pala line is flowing and sinuous with subdued colour tones, unlike the terse lines of Jain painting. The sculpture and painting of the Pala monasteries speak a similar language to that seen at Ajanta.

The finest example is the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita ("Perfection of Wisdom" written in eight thousand lines), now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was painted at the monastery of Nalanda in the fifteenth year of the reign of the Pala king Ramapala, in the last quarter of the eleventh century, and has six pages of illustrations and wooden covers painted on both sides. A well known folio shows the Bodhisattva Lokeshvar.

Pala art came to an end in the first half of the thirteenth century, after the dynasty had weakened and invaders attacked and destroyed the monasteries.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: Pala art ended in the first half of the thirteenth century. In reality: the monasteries were the engine of the style. When the great teaching centres were destroyed, the workshops, the students and the stream of visiting pilgrims who carried art abroad disappeared together, and the tradition stopped in India. Its influence continued to be seen in the Buddhist art of the Himalayan regions that had received it earlier.

Comparing the three schools

Timeline: the order to remember

Key people, places and terms

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Earlier wall painting: Post-Mauryan Trends in Indian Art and Architecture covers Ajanta, whose language the Pala line echoes.
• Next: The Rajasthani Schools of Painting picks up the indigenous style and carries its conventions into the seventeenth century.
• Parallel strands: The Mughal School of Miniature Painting and The Deccani Schools of Painting show the Persian influence that first entered through the Sultanate courts.