India Arts and Crafts - Folk Art Paintings

The earliest examples of Indian art are the work of Stone age cave dwellers whose paintings, the oldest dating back to over 50,000 years BC, still survive on the rock walls of their primitive homes. Crude but lively, they were executed in a wide range of natural pigments, depicting hunting scenes with large wild animals like the bull and stick figures engaged in ritual activities.

No other evidence now remains of the development of Indian painting in the last few centuries BC. but by the 5th century AD cave murals had reached a very different level of sophistication. In the great Buddhist cave temple systems at Ajanta. In Maharashtra, the world's finest examples of religious wall paintings cover the surfaces of chamber after chamber with astonishingly well crafted scenes from Buddhist lore, the soft mineral colors retaining their richness down the ages. In the Deccan, fragments of 6th century Hindu, Buddhist and Jain cave temple murals show the influence of south indian painting, using few,but strong colors.

On a smaller scale, the palm-leaf miniatures of the medieval east Indian pala dynasty echo something of the style of Ajanta. These paintings illuminated Buddhist texts, written on palm leaves sewn between wooden covers, and exhibited exquisite nuances of color and line. In contrast, the palm leaf paintings of the Jains in western India were more angular and stylized, the colors bold and simple.