doubtless made for middle-class patrons and were executed in Western India
for one important reason. Dwarka, the scene of Krishna's life as a prince,
and Prabhasa, the scene of the final slaughter, were both in Western
India. Both had already become centres of pilgrimage and although Jayadeva
had written his great poem far to the East, on the other side of India,
pilgrims had brought copies with them while journeying from Bengal on
visits to the sites. The _Gita Govinda_ of Jayadeva had become in fact as
much a Western Indian text as the _Balagopala Stuti_ of Bilvamangala. With
manuscript illustrations being already produced in Western India--but not,
so far as we know, elsewhere--it was not unnatural that the first
illustrated versions of these poems should be painted here. And it is
these circumstances which determined their style. Until the fifteenth
century the chief manuscripts illustrated in Western India were Jain
scriptures commissioned by members of the merchant community. Jainism had
originated in the sixth century B.C. as a parallel movement to Buddhism.
It had proved more accommodating to Hinduism, and when Buddhism had
collapsed in Western India in the ninth century A.D., Jainism had
continued as a local variant of Hinduism proper. Jain manuscripts had at
first consisted of long rectangular strips made of palm-leaves on which
the scriptures were written in heavy black letters. Each slip was roughly
three inches wide and ten long and into the text had been inserted lean
diagrammatic paintings either portraying Mahavira, the founder of the
cult, or illustrating episodes in his earthly career.

About 1400, palm-leaf was superseded by paper and from then onwards
manuscripts were given slightly larger pages. Owing partly to their
association with the same religious order and partly to their constant
duplication, Jain manuscripts had early conformed to a certain rigid type.
The painting was marked by lean and wiry outlines, brilliant red and blue
and above all by an air of savage ferocity expressed through the idiom of