Indigenous and Sultanate styles

Alongside Jain painting, in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, local feudal lords and wealthy citizens commissioned paintings on Hindu, Jain and secular themes: the Mahapurana, the Chaurpanchashika, the Aranyaka Parvan, the Bhagavata Purana, the Gita Govinda.

This indigenous style (also called pre-Mughal or pre-Rajasthani) had its own features: transparent fabrics, with the heroine's odhni (veil) 'ballooning' over her head; simple, suggestive buildings; and fixed ways of drawing water, the horizon, plants and animals. These features passed into early Rajasthani painting.

Meanwhile, under the Sultanate rulers, Persian, Turkic and Afghan influences arrived. Central Asian and local artists worked side by side, and created the Sultanate School: a mixed style, more than a single school.

Its Persian elements: the colour palette, the faces and figures, and a simplified landscape with decorative details.

Its main example is the Nimatnama ('Book of Delicacies'), painted at Mandu under Nasir Shah Khalji: a book of recipes, with sections on hunting, medicines, cosmetics and perfumes. The Laurchanda paintings, of a love story told with Sufi feeling, are another example.