A History of Indian Painting - Manuscript, Mughul and Deccani Traditions

A History Of Indian Painting Manuscript, Moghul And Deccani Traditions 

by Krishna Chaitanya


10 Colour and 80 Halftone Illustrations

The layman can be won over to art, and win for himself a realm of fine experience, if he is not pushed but by punditry or patronised by cliche- ridden copy-writing that reveals its shallowness straightaway, It would be inexcusable if all the relevant research data are not taken into ac- count; but the layman will not be won over if they are not melted into a fluent stream of narration which should, further, continuously reflect the images of beauty the work is supposed to discuss

This was the ideal kept in mind in the first volume of this work which dealt with the tradition of mural painting in India. Its encouraging re- ception has led to the present sequel, which takes up the story with the descent of painting from the mural surface to the miniature.

This volume takes the reader through Pala painting which con- served in miniature radiant Ajantan memories, the radiation of the new miniature tradition along the vast length of the Himalayas from Ladakh to Bhutan, the reappearance of the second generation mural derived from the miniature, the emergence of the medieval manner with its piquant regional variations, the splendid star- burst of Moghul painting, the origin and evolution of painting in the Deccan with its more complex heredity.

About The Author

Krishna Chaitanya (b. 1918), whom a national daily once has described as “India’s nearest approximation to the Renaissance man, versatile in interests and depth of learning, and prolific’ in output,” has an unusual record in a wide variety of fields. Author of a nine-volume history of world literature, many books on Indian culture, several books retelling Sanskrit classics for children, he is the winner of a special award from the Kerala Sahitya Academy and was invited by the Institute of International Education, New York, for a lecturetour of the USA for six months as a “Critic of Ideas.”

His major work is a five-volume philosophy of freedom. Reviewers of the four volumes already published have equated his work, in terms of its scope and achievement, with that of Thomas Aquinas, the French Encyclopedists, Herbert Spencer, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin and Whitehead. For working on the final volume, he has been awarded a Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fellowship.

In the field of art, Krishna Chaitanya is a member of the Inter- national Association of Art Critics, Paris; Vice-President of the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi; Editor of Roopa-Lekha, India’s oldest extant art journal; author of several monographs on contemporary Indian artists; art critic of Hindustan Times. He has organised Indian art exhibitions In Afghanistan and China and visited art galleries in many countries of Asia and Europe, and in the United States.