The Pala School

The Pala manuscripts of eastern India (eleventh and twelfth centuries) are among the earliest surviving Indian paintings. The Pala period was the last great phase of Buddhist art in India.

Great monasteries such as Nalanda and Vikramsila were centres of learning, with workshops that made manuscripts (with pictures of Vajrayana Buddhist deities, on palm leaves) and bronze images.

Students and pilgrims from South East Asia carried Pala art back home, so it spread to Nepal, Tibet, Burma, Sri Lanka and Java.

Pala painting looks very different from Jain painting. Instead of thin, wiry lines, it has flowing, sinuous lines and soft, subdued colours, close to the Ajanta murals and to Pala sculpture.

An example: the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita ('Perfection of Wisdom' in eight thousand lines), painted at Nalanda under King Ramapala. Pala art came to an end in the early thirteenth century, when invaders destroyed the monasteries.