Chitra (art)

[5] The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).

Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas).

[5] In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra.

[6] More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

[8][note 3] The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta.

[8] Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

[10] The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls.

The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

[11] The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows: Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

These include:[15][16][17] These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments.

Inorganic (earthy) colorants like yellow and red ochre, orpiment, green celadonite, and ultramarine blue are mentioned (lapis lazuli).

Inorganic (earthy) colorants like yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite, and ultramarine blue are mentioned (lapis lazuli).

It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: (1) posture; (2) proportion; (3) the use of the plumb line; (4) charm; (5) detail (how much and where); (6) verisimilitude; (7) kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; (8) vrddhi (gain).

Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

[31][32]{{refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside.

For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions.

[2] According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves.