certain slovenly crudity. We do not know for whom these manuscripts were
made nor even in what particular part of Western India or Rajasthan they
were executed. They were clearly not produced in any great centre of
painting and can hardly have been commissioned by a prince or merchant of
much aesthetic sensibility. They prove, however, that a demand for
illustrated versions of the Krishna story was persisting and suggest that
even prosperous traders may perhaps have acted as patrons.

The second type is obviously the product of far more sophisticated
influences. It is once again a copy of the _Gita Govinda_ and was probably
executed in about 1590 in or near Jaunpur in Eastern India. As early as
1465, a manuscript of the leading Jain scripture, the _Kalpasutra_, had
been executed at Jaunpur for a wealthy merchant.[71] Its style was
basically Western Indian, yet being executed in an area so far to the
east, it also possessed certain novelties of manner. The heads were more
squarely shaped, the eyes larger in proportion to the face, the ladies'
drapery fanning out in great angular swirls. The bodies' contours were
also delineated with exquisitely sharp precision. The court at the time
was that of Hussain Shah, a member of the marauding Muslim dynasties which
since the twelfth century had enveloped Northern India; and it is possibly
due to persistent Muslim influence that painting revived in the last two
decades of the sixteenth century. Illustrated versions of passionate love
poetry were executed[72] and as part of the same vogue for poetic romance,
the _Gita Govinda_ may once again have been illustrated.[73] Between the
style of these later pictures and that of the Jain text of 1465, there are
such clear affinities that the same local tradition is obviously
responsible. Yet the new group of paintings has a distinctive elegance all
its own. As in the previous group, the detached projecting eye has gone.
Each situation is treated with a slashing boldness. There is no longer a
sense of cramping detail and the flat red backgrounds of Western Indian