Early Painting Traditions in India

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Important schools of manuscript illumination flourished in the Buddhist monasteries of eastern India and in the Jain temples of western India. This is all near to ninth century. The subjects were religious and scriptural. In, those times, Paintings were inscribed on palm leaves until the introduction of paper in the fourteenth century. The oldest known Hindu texts date from the second half of the fifteenth century and relate to the Jain manuscript tradition. Hindu myths and epics were the subjects of these early works, produced in north India. By the early sixteenth century, a new style had arisen that illustrated secular as well as religious themes.

In the courts of the pre-Mughal Muslim sultanates, both the styles and the themes of painting began to combine the traditions of Persian painting and an indigenous sensibility.