Prehistoric and protohistoric periods

Painting in India should have a history stretching as far back as any of the other arts but, because of its perishable nature, little has survived. None of the examples found in rock shelters over almost all of India, and chiefly representing scenes of hunting and war, appears to be earlier than the 8th century bc, and all may be as late as the 10th century ad. A faint idea of the painter’s art in the Indus Valley civilization can be had from the pottery, elaborately decorated with leaf designs and geometrical patterns.

Ancient wall painting

The earliest substantial remains are those found in rock-cut cave temples at Ajantā, in western India. They belong to the 2nd or 1st century bc and are in a style reminiscent of the relief sculpture at Sānchi. Also found at Ajantā are the most substantial remains of Indian painting of about the 5th century ad and a little later, when ancient Indian civilization was in full flower. The paintings, the work of several ateliers, decorate the walls and ceilings of the numerous cave temples and monasteries at the site. They are executed in the tempera technique on smooth surfaces, prepared by application of plaster. The themes, nominally Buddhist, illustrate the major events of the Buddha’s life, the Jātaka tales, and the various divinities of the expanding Buddhist pantheon. The ceilings are covered with rich motifs, based generally upon the lotus stem and the world of animals and birds. The style is unlike anything seen in later Indian art, expansive, free, and dynamic. The graceful figures are painted by a sweeping and accomplished brush; and they are given body and substance by modelling in colour and by a schematic distribution of light and shade that has little to do with scientific chiaroscuro. The narrative compositions, handled with utmost dexterity, are a natural outgrowth of the long traditions of relief sculpture and reflect the splendour and maturity of contemporary sculpture. The large images of the bodhisattvas in Cave 1, combining rich elegance with spiritual serenity, reflect a vision that sees the shifting world of matter and the transcendental calm of Nirvāṇa as essentially one.

Except for a large and magnificent painting of a dance scene found at the rock-cut cave at Bāgh—a painting executed in a style closely resembling Ajantā—hardly any other work of this great period survives. Cave temples at Bādāmi, in the Karnataka country, and Sittānavāsal, in Tamil Nadu, probably of the late 6th and 7th centuries ad are already but echoes of the style of the 5th century, which appears to have died out around this time.

Eastern Indian style

Small illustrations on palm leaf, chiefly painted at the great Buddhist establishments of eastern India, appear to have conserved some elements of this ancient style; but they have lost its dramatic impact, which is replaced by a studied preciosity and an inhibited meticulousness. The surviving paintings date from the 11th and 12th centuries and are conventional icons of the numerous Buddhist gods and goddesses, narrative representations having largely disappeared. With the destruction of these Buddhist centres by the Islāmic invader, the east Indian style seems to have come to an end.

Western Indian style

The style of Ajantā is succeeded in western India by what has been appropriately named the western Indian style. Among the earliest examples are a few surviving wall paintings of the Kailāsa temple (mid-8th century) at Ellora and the Jaina temples, built at the same site a hundred years later. The plastic sense of form, so evident at Ajantā, is emphatically replaced by a style that even at this early stage is heavily dependent on line. The contours of the figures are sharp and angular, the forms dry and abstract; and the fluent, stately rhythms of Ajantā have become laboured and halting.

The most copious examples of this style, however, have survived not on the walls of temples but in the large number of illustrated manuscripts commissioned by members of the Jaina community. The earliest of these are contemporary with eastern Indian manuscripts and are also painted on palm leaf; but the style, instead of attempting to cling to ancient traditions, moves steadily in the direction already established at Ellora. It is a perfect counterpart of contemporary sculpture in western India, relying for its effect on line, which progressively becomes more angular and wiry until all naturalism has been deliberately erased. The figures are almost always shown in profile, the full-face view generally reserved for representations of the tīrthaṅkaras, or the Jaina saviours. A convention that appears unfailingly for the duration of the western Indian style is the eye projecting beyond the face shown in profile, meant to represent the second eye, which would not be visible in this posture. The colours are few and pure: yellow, green, blue, black, and red, which was preferred for the background. In the beginning, the illustrations are simple icons in small panels; but gradually they become more elaborate, with scenes from the lives of the various Jaina saviours as told in the Kalpa-sūtra and from the adventures of the monk Kālaka as related in the Kālakāḫāryakathā the most favoured.

Even greater elaboration was possible with the increasing availability of paper from the late 14th century; with larger surfaces to paint on, by the middle of the 15th century artists were producing opulent manuscripts, such as the Kalpa-sūtra in the Devasanopaḍā library, Ahmadābād. The text is written in gold on coloured ground, the margins gorgeously illuminated with richest decorative and figural patterns, and the main paintings often occupying the entire page. Blue and gold, in addition to red, are used with increasing lavishness, testifying to the prosperity of the patron. The use of such costly materials, however, did not necessarily produce works of quality, and one is often left with the impression of cursive and hasty workmanship. With some variations—but hardly any substantial departures from the bounds that it had set for itself—the style endured throughout the 16th century and even extended into the 17th. The political subjugation of the country by the forces of Islām may have contributed to the conservatism of the style but did not result in its total elimination, as seems to have been the case in eastern India. Indeed, in the course of its long life, the western Indian school became a national style, painting at other centres in India interpreting and elaborating its forms in their own individual manner. In the province of Orissa, painting on palm leaf and in a manner entirely dependent on the western Indian style has continued up to the present day.

Transition to the Mughal and Rajasthani styles

The belief held earlier by scholars that the new Islāmic rulers of India did not patronize any painting until the rise of the Mughal dynasty in the 16th century is being abandoned in the face of the literary testimony and the discovery or recognition of illustrated manuscripts that were painted at Indian courts. Nor should this be surprising, as the Muslim kings of India had before them the example of other rulers of the Islāmic world who were great patrons of painting in spite of the injunctions of orthodox Islām against the portrayal of living beings. The taste of these Indian rulers, however, did not turn to the western Indian style but to the flourishing traditions of Islāmic painting abroad, notably neighbouring Iran. As many painters as architects had in all probability been invited from foreign countries; and illustrated manuscripts, handily transported, must have been easily available. As a result there appears to have developed what can only be called an Indo-Persian style, based essentially on the schools of Iran but affected to a greater or lesser extent by the individual tastes of the Indian rulers and by the local styles. The earliest known examples are paintings dating from the 15th century onward. The most important are the Khamseh (“Quintet”) of Amīr Khosrow of Delhi (Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), a Bostān painted in Mandu (National Museum, New Delhi), and, most interesting of all, a manuscript of the Neʿmat-nāmeh (India Office Library, London) painted for a sultan of Mālwa in the opening years of the 16th century. Its illustrations are derived from the Turkmen style of Shīrāz but show clear Indian features adapted from the local version of the western Indian style.

Though the western Indian style was essentially conservative, it was not unfailingly so. It began to show signs of an inner change most notably in two manuscripts from Mandu, a Kalpa-sūtra and a Kālakāḫāryakathā of about 1439, and a Kalpa-sūtra painted at Jaunpur in 1465. These works were done in the opulent manner of the 15th century, but for the first time the quality of the line is different, and the uncompromisingly abstract expression begins to make way for a more human and emotional mood. By the opening years of the 16th century, a new and vigorous style had come into being. Although derived from the western Indian style, it is clearly independent, full of the most vital energy, deeply felt, and profoundly moving. The earliest dated example is an Āraṇyaka Parva of the Mahābhārata (1516; The Asiatic Society, Mumbai), and among the finest are series illustrating the Bhāgavata-Purāṇa and the Caurapañcāśikā of Bilhaṇa, scattered in collections all over the world. A technically more refined variant of this style, preferring the pale, cool colours of Persian derivation, a fine line, and meticulous ornamentation, exists contemporaneously and is best illustrated by a manuscript of the ballad Candāmyana by Mullā Dāūd (c. first half of the 16th century; Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, Mumbai). The early 16th century thus appears to have been a period of inventiveness and set the stage for the development of the Mughal and Rājput schools, which thrived from the 16th to the 19th century.