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Manuscript Painting:
contd..

The earliest illustrated manuscript of Assam is the Adi Dasama of the Bhagavata purana rendered into Assamese verses by Sankaradeva . It has since a been published under the title . Citra bhagavata. The manuscript was recovered from a sattra named Balisattra in the present district of Nagaon. The Sattriya is attributed to the style of painting for the existence of the manuscript in the precinct of a sattra. Many more illustrated manuscripts covering three centuries including the 19th.century have been recovered from different sattras and households of Assam during last seventy years or so. Although the pictorial idiom by and large remains the same with all these works, there are stylistic variations among the artists mainly due to individual comprehension of the text and the ability of the artist in matching the verbal imagery through a parallel pictorial imagery.

It is interesting to note that the Citra bhagavata referred to above beas a date in the saka ear 1461. The date falls during the life-time of Srimanta Sankaradeva leading one to place the paintings as early as in the 15th.century A.D. But the pictorial style the manuscript is representing , does not suggest such an earlier date to the paintings. Moreover,the date in the manuscript was inscribed in later handwriting outside the regular colophon. Besides there are certain cultural elements, for example the muglai-pag being used as headgear of some of the pictorial figures, belong to a period of development of late 17th.century. The headgear bears similarity with its counterpart in the Mughal court of India during the region of Shahjehan (1627-1657). The presence of this element alongwith the absence of four cornered chakdar-jama worn by the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the pictorial idiom of the Citra bhagavata are pointer to defermining the date of execution of the paintings in late 17th century. Dr. Motichandra has also suggested a date in the late 17th or early 18th century for the the paintings od the Citra bhagavata .There is no doubt that the artist of the Citra bhagavata derived some elements from the Jatina tradition for this painting. But his was a style distinctively regional without having its parallel in other schools of painting developed elsewhere in India. Whatever elements he had collected from extraneous sources the artist had aptly assimilated all to define his pictorial idiom which was distinctively his own. Some of the illustrated manuscripts executed between 1683 A.D. and 1731 A.D. suggest their old abode in the river island of Majuli. The execution of these manuscripts was completed immediately after the Citra bhagavata. Later on these manuscripts migrated from Majuli with the migration of the sattras which owned them to places in the north bank of the river Brahmaputra. Considering this factor it can be easily surmised that the provenance of the Citra Bhagavata, and for that matter the sattriya school, was Majuli.