The stories on the walls

A melting pot of races, cultures and religions, India offers great diversity in its art as well, as "Indian Painting" shows. Its mural tradition comes, says Mira Seth, from the composite culture of a land of great physical splendour, a rich racial mix and a complex array of religions and economic classes.

Seth has an extensive background in Indian art history. Her coffee-table tome offers a panoramic examination of murals from all of the major schools and periods, and highlights their interconnection.

The ambitious, laboriously researched book explores the entire heritage of the wall paintings that adorn sacred edifices from all over India. This means that Seth had to visit all the major locales featured, from the monasteries of south India and the Deccan, where the famous Ajanta and Ellora caves and monks retreats are located, to Rajasthan and Kashmir.

India's mural tradition, she notes, is far from a collection of regional styles, as is widely believed. Seth asserts that there is a pan-Indian style of wall painting through which different regions have interacted with each other to varying degrees.

She cites the route of pilgrimages as the chief agent of contact. Essentially, the art form is identifiable through a set of common characteristics. The paintings usually exhibit movement, depicted through human figures walking, riding animals or arriving airborne on clouds.

Then, the art stresses the connections among painting, dance and music, with movements governed by classical musical notations.

Characters, human or animal, tend to express their emotions openly, be it wonder, anger or joy.

The paintings also reflect strong religious overtones, depicting scenes from classic tales from Hinduisn, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.

Of all the murals she's encountered, the author considers those of the Ajanta caves to be the best classical examples in India

because of their stylistic, iconographic impact on other traditions.

The Ajanta artists are seen as the initiators of the epic style of painting that spreads horizontally and thus maintains the continuity of the story as well as the thematic parallels.