The Rajasthani Schools of Painting Class 12 Notes

These notes condense Chapter 2, “The Rajasthani Schools of Painting”, from the NCERT Class 12 textbook An Introduction to Indian Art Part II into a revision-ready guide. They follow the 2026-27 session.

Every school gets a compact section covering its period, patrons, artists, stylistic markers and favourite themes, supported by tables for source texts, key technical terms and dated milestones that you can scan in seconds.

Work through the eight school sections first, then test yourself with the at-a-glance comparison table, the two miniature-reading walkthroughs, and the common-mistakes table at the end. The chapter’s five exercises close the page with an answer-structure guide. For companion material, see the Class 12 Fine Art notes hub.

If you want to recheck an inscription or a folio’s current collection, the full chapter is in the official NCERT textbook PDF of An Introduction to Indian Art Part II.

Rajasthani Schools: Scope and the Name Question

The term Rajasthani Schools of Painting covers the painting traditions that grew in the princely kingdoms and thikanas of what is now Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh — Mewar, Bundi, Kota, Jaipur, Bikaner, Kishangarh, Jodhpur (Marwar), Malwa, Sirohi and similar principalities — roughly between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries (NCERT, p. 10).

The “Rajput Paintings” misconception, autopsied

Scholar Anand Coomaraswamy coined the term “Rajput Paintings” in 1916, because most rulers and patrons of these kingdoms were Rajputs. His purpose was to distinguish this group from the better-known Mughal School of Painting (NCERT, p. 10). The umbrella he built was wide: it included Malwa in Central India and the Pahari Schools of the Himalayan foothills.

For Coomaraswamy, “Rajput” stood for the indigenous mainland tradition that existed before the Mughal conquest.

That label is now obsolete. Later scholarship divides the material into specific categories: Rajasthani and Pahari are studied separately, and Malwa is treated within the Rajasthani group. Writing “Rajput Painting” as a live category in an answer follows a hundred-year-old classification that the chapter itself has replaced.

One idea to hold before studying any school: these traditions sat close in distance but grew apart in style. They differed in execution (fine or bold), colour preference (brilliant or gentle), compositional habits, modes of narration, and their attitude to naturalism — some leaned toward observing nature, others toward extreme mannerism (NCERT, p. 10).

The side-by-side chapters on the Mughal School of Miniature Painting and the Pahari Schools of Painting make the contrast clear.

Under the Brush: Materials, Teamwork and Key Terms

Every Rajasthani miniature followed the same physical process, in the same order (NCERT, p. 10–11):

1. Prepare the wasli. Several thin sheets of handmade paper were glued together until the sheet reached the desired thickness.
2. Sketch the outline in black or brown. Brief notations or small sample colour patches told the colourist which hue went where.
3. Fill the colours. Pigments came mostly from minerals; gold and silver were used for precious detail. The pigment was mixed with glue as the binding medium.
4. Paint with fine brushes made of camel and squirrel hair.
5. Burnish with an agate to give the finished surface a uniform sheen.

Production was teamwork, not one artist’s solo labour (NCERT, p. 11). The master artist composed the picture and made the preliminary drawings. Pupils or specialists then handled colouring, portraiture, architecture, landscape and animals. The master returned for the finishing touches, and a scribe wrote the verse in the space reserved for it.

Themes and Texts: What the Artists Painted

The devotional engine of this art was Vaishnavism in the cults of Rama and Krishna, carried by the Bhakti movement across western, northern and central India by the sixteenth century (NCERT, p. 11). Krishna was worshipped as God and as the ideal lover; love itself became a religious theme fusing sensuousness with mysticism.

In this scheme Krishna is the creator from whom all creation is a sportive emanation, and Radha is the human soul offering herself to God — a relationship painted again and again through Gita Govinda imagery (NCERT, p. 12).

Ragamala structure (NCERT, p. 13): each raga carries a specific mood, time of day and season, and is envisioned in divine or human form. Albums are organised as families — a male raga heads each family with six female consorts, the raginis. The six main ragas are Bhairava, Malkos, Hindol, Dipak, Megha and Shri.

Alongside religion, painters recorded courtly life: darbar scenes and historic moments, hunting expeditions, wars and victories, picnics and garden parties, music and dance, rituals, festivals and wedding processions, portraits of kings and courtiers, city views, and birds and animals (NCERT, p. 13).

Malwa School: Style Without a Single Court

Malwa flourished between 1600 and 1700 CE and is regarded as the most representative of the Hindu Rajput courts (NCERT, p. 14). Its two-dimensional, simplified language completes a stylistic progression that runs from Jain manuscript painting to the Chaurpanchashika manuscript paintings.

• No precise centre. Other Rajasthani schools grew in specific kingdoms, but Malwa suggests a vast territory in Central India, with only sporadic place names — Mandu, Nusratgarh and Narsyang Sahar. The many Malwa paintings found in the Datia Palace collection point to Bundelkhand as a likely region of production.
• Travelling artists. The absence of patron portraits and of any mention of patron kings suggests the Datia rulers bought ready-made paintings from travelling artists who carried popular themes: Ramayana, Bhagvata Purana, Amaru Shataka, Rasikapriya, Ragamala and Baramasa.
• Dated works. An illustrated Amaru Shataka of 1652 CE and Madho Das’s Ragamala of 1680 CE are among the few early dated sets.

A good test case is the Bhagvata Purana folio showing Krishna killing the demon Shaktasura (National Museum, New Delhi, 1680–1690).

It is a typical Malwa composition in which the space is carefully compartmentalised: one section shows the celebrations after Krishna’s birth with men and women singing and dancing, another shows Nanda and Yashoda donating cows to Brahmins, another food being prepared, another women hovering over baby Krishna to guard him from the evil eye — and the narration closes with Krishna toppling the cart-demon with a kick (NCERT, p. 27).

Mewar School: Sahibdin to the Pichhwai

Mewar is a conjectured significant early centre of the region, but long wars with the Mughals destroyed most early examples, so the school’s emergence is tied to a dated set: Nisardin’s Ragamala painted at Chawand in 1605, whose colophon page records the information (NCERT, p. 15).

The set shares the pre-seventeenth-century idiom — direct approach, simpler compositions, sporadic decorative details and vibrant colours.

The reign of Jagat Singh I (1628–1652) reformulated Mewar’s pictorial aesthetics under two master artists, Sahibdin and Manohar:

Sahibdin’s Yuddha Kanda, the “Book of Battles”, dated 1652 and part of the Jagat Singh Ramayana, introduces a novel device: oblique aerial perspective, which gives credibility to the ambitious scale of battle scenes.

The artist either layers several episodes into a single painting (as here, showing Indrajit’s devious tactics and magic weapons) or spreads one episode over several folios (NCERT, p. 16).

The Maru Ragini folio from a Mewar Ragamala set carries crucial documentary evidence.

Its inscription classifies Maru as a ragini of Raga Shri and records the year Samvat 1685 (1628 CE), the patron Rana Shri Jagat Singh, the place Udaipur, and the artist Sahibdin, called chitara, “someone who paints”; the act of painting is termed likhitam, because the artist’s goal was a painted equivalent of the written verse (NCERT, p. 28).

Maru is the consort of Raga Shri because of the popular ballad Dhola-Maru — the story of Prince Dhola and Princess Maru, who faced trials, evil relatives, battles and tragic accidents before being united. Here they are shown escaping together on a camel.

From the eighteenth century Mewar turned courtly and secular: portraits, outsized court scenes, hunting, festivals, zenana activities and sports replaced textual illustration as favourite subjects (NCERT, p. 17). Mewar artists generally loved a bright palette with prominent reds and yellows.

Nathdwara, a Vaishnava town near Udaipur, emerged as a school in the late seventeenth century producing pichhwais — large painted cloth backdrops for the deity Shrinathji’s festivals.

Bundi and Kota: One Kingdom, Two Characters

Bundi: unblemished colour and lush nature

Bundi flourished in the seventeenth century, remarkable for its unblemished colour sense and excellent formal design (NCERT, p. 17). Its earliest datable work is the Chunar Ragamala of 1591, painted at Chunar in the reign of Bhoj Singh (1585–1607), the Hada Rajput ruler.

A Persian inscription names its artists — Shaykh Hasan, Shaykh Ali and Shaykh Hatim — who describe themselves as pupils of the Mughal masters Mir Sayyid Ali and Khwaja Abdus Samad; Chunar, near Benaras, was where Bhoj Singh and his father Rao Surjan Singh kept a palace (NCERT, p. 18).

• Key patrons: Rao Chattar Sal (1631–1659, made governor of Delhi by Shahjahan), Rao Bhao Singh (1659–1682, a self-indulging patron who commissioned many portraits of himself), Aniruddha Singh (1682–1702), Budh Singh (who lost his kingdom four times yet encouraged painting), Umed Singh (1749–1771, refinement of minute detail), Bishen Singh (1771–1821, a connoisseur with a taste for hunting) and Ram Singh (1821–1889, under whom the palace chitrashalain got murals of processions, hunts and Krishna’s story).
• Style markers: lush vegetation, picturesque landscape with varied flora, wildlife and birds, hills and thick jungles, and water bodies; a series of fine equestrian portraits; and elephant drawing considered unsurpassed in both Bundi and Kota.
• Feminine ideal: women are petite, with round faces, receding foreheads, sharp noses, full cheeks, sharply penciled eyebrows and a “pinched” waist (NCERT, p. 18).
• In the eighteenth century Bundi absorbed Deccani aesthetics, especially a love for bright, vivid colours. Baramasa was a popular Bundi theme.

Tulchi Ram’s equestrian portrait of prince (Kanwar) Aniruddha Singh (1680, National Museum, New Delhi) pushes the horse so high in the air that the ground is invisible — a way of suggesting speed by dropping the foreground altogether (NCERT, p. 29).

Kota: the pursuit of the chase

Bundi and Kota were one kingdom until 1625, when Jahangir divided it and awarded part to Madhu Singh, the younger son of Rao Ratan Singh, as a reward for defending Jahangir against Prince Khurram’s rebellion (NCERT, p. 19–20). Kota’s own school began around the 1660s under Jagat Singh (1658–1683).

For decades its paintings are hard to tell from Bundi’s — some compositions were taken verbatim — though an attitude of non-conformity shows in figural and architectural exaggerations.

• Ram Singh I (1686–1708) enlarged the inventory of subjects; Kota artists seem to have been the first to treat landscape as the real subject of a composition rather than a backdrop.
• Umed Singh (1770–1819) came to the throne at ten; his regent Zalim Singh kept the boy-king amused with hunting while he governed. Paintings became flattering records of Umed Singh’s exploits, and the chase turned into a social ritual in which even court women took part.
• Style markers: spontaneous, calligraphic drawing; emphatic shading, especially the double-lid eye; and unsurpassed skill in animals and combat. A famous folio shows Maharaja Ram Singh I of Kota hunting lions at Mukundgarh (1695).

Bikaner and Kishangarh: Mughal Elegance and the Bani Thani Face

Bikaner: a documented, Mughal-tinged atelier

Rao Bika Rathore founded Bikaner in 1488. The kingdom’s long association with the Mughals produced a painting language marked by Mughal elegance and a subdued colour palette (NCERT, p. 20). Anup Singh (1669–1698) instituted a library that became a repository of manuscripts and paintings.

Inscriptional evidence shows several Mughal atelier masters visiting and working at Bikaner; Ustad Ali Raza, a master painter from Delhi employed by Karan Singh, has an earliest work datable to around 1650 that marks the school’s beginning (NCERT, p. 21).

• Anup Singh’s atelier: master artist Ruknuddin (descended from the Mughal court; his style fused indigenous, Deccani and Mughal conventions; he painted Ramayana, Rasikapriya and Durga Satpsati), with Ibrahim, Nathu, Sahibdin and Isa as other known painters.
• Mandi studios — professional workshops where a group worked under a master — were a Bikaner practice; Ruknuddin, Ibrahim and Nathu managed several.
• Studio bookkeeping: on completion, a court archivist entered the master artist’s name and date behind the painting. Gudarayi (“to lift”) meant the master’s finishing touches; the studio also performed marammat (repair) and made nakals (copies) of older works (NCERT, p. 22).
• Artist portraits are unique to Bikaner; most are inscribed with ancestry, and the artists are addressed as Ustas or Ustad.
• Bahis, the royal archival day-to-day diaries, plus inscriptions in Marwari (occasionally Persian), make Bikaner one of the best-documented schools — names, dates, places of production and occasions.
• Ruknuddin worked in soft colour tones; Ibrahim’s figures are dainty with heavily modelled faces and a misty, dreamlike quality — his studio was the most prolific, his name appearing on sets of Baramasa, Ragamala and Rasikapriya.
• Named work: Krishna supporting Mount Govardhan by Shahadin, 1690, British Museum, London.

Kishangarh: the most stylised face in Rajasthan

Kishangarh, founded in 1609 by Kishan Singh (one of the sons of the king of Jodhpur), is widely held to be among the most stylised of all Rajasthani miniatures (NCERT, p. 22). Its hallmark is a distinct facial type: arched eyebrows; lotus-petal eyes slightly tinged with pink and framed by drooping eyelids; a sharp, slender nose; and thin lips.

• Artists were already working at the Kishangarh court under Man Singh (1658–1706). By the early eighteenth century, under Raj Singh (1706–1748), the state’s distinctive style had evolved: elongated human forms, lavish use of green, and a penchant for panoramic landscapes.
• Raj Singh’s initiation into the Pushtimargiya cult of Vallabhacharya made Krishna Lila themes personal favourites of the rulers and a major part of their court art.
• Sawant Singh’s most celebrated artist was Nihal Chand, who worked for him from 1735 to 1757. Nihal Chand painted Sawant Singh’s poetry of divine love — Radha and Krishna in courtly surroundings, often appearing tiny within vast, minutely detailed panoramic landscapes (NCERT, p. 23).
• Named work: Krishna and Radha in a pavilion, Nihal Chand, 1750, Allahabad Museum.

Bani Thani ties the school’s style to its patron’s life (NCERT, p. 32). Sawant Singh wrote devotional Brajbhasha poetry under the pen name Nagari Das. His muse was a young singer — an attendant of Raj Singh’s wife and herself a gifted poetess, singer and dancer — who was called Bani Thani, “the bewitching lady of fashion”.

His poem Bihari Jas Chandrika became the basis for Nihal Chand’s painting of Bani Thani, a blending of poetry and painting. The exaggerated Kishangarh facial type is believed to derive from her sharp features.

In the painting, Radha’s face shows deeply curved eyes, an exaggerated arch of the eyebrows, a pointed nose, a serpentine curl of hair spiralling down the cheek, thin lips and a pronounced chin (NCERT, p. 32). Troubled by fratricidal conflict, Sawant Singh abdicated in 1757 and retired to Vrindavan with Bani Thani.

Jodhpur and Jaipur: Folk Resistance and Courtly Splendour

Jodhpur (Marwar): the folk style that resisted the Mughals

Mughal visual ideas entered Marwar’s portraiture and court scenes, but the indigenous folkish style was so embedded that it resisted being overpowered and prevailed in most illustrated sets (NCERT, p. 23). One of the earliest dated sets is Virji’s Ragamala painted at Pali in 1623.

• Maharaja Jaswant Singh (1638–1678) ushered in a productive period around 1640: a documentary trend of portraiture and court-life depiction that lasted until photography replaced it in the nineteenth century. His devotion to the Vallabha cult of Shrinathji encouraged Krishna themes, with Bhagvata Purana the most prominent (NCERT, p. 24).
• Ajit Singh (1679–1724) regained the throne after 25 years of war with Aurangzeb, fought by the legendary Veer Durgadas Rathore, who recaptured Marwar. Durgadas’s heroism was celebrated in poems and court paintings, and his equestrian portraits became popular.
• Man Singh (1803–1843): his reign produced the Ramayana (1804), Dhola-Maru, Panchatantra (1804) and Shiva Purana. The Ramayana is intriguing because the artist used his knowledge of Jodhpur to build Rama’s Ayodhya — its bazaars, lanes and gateways are Jodhpur’s. Man Singh followed the Nath Sampradaya, and a Nath Charita was painted in 1824.
• Mixed influences in one frame: Chaugan Players (1810) by Dana shows a princess playing polo with her companions. It may not come from the main court because it blends many schools: Mughal in the depiction of women, Deccani in the horses, Bundi and Kishangarh in the facial features, and a flat green background that suggests the indigenous preference for flat surfaces (NCERT, p. 30).

Jaipur: from Amer to the new capital

The Jaipur School grew at Amer, the nearest of the large Rajput states to the Mughal capitals of Agra and Delhi.

Its rulers kept cordial Mughal relations from the start: Raja Bharmal (1548–1575) married his daughter to Akbar; his son Bhagwant Das (1575–1592) was Akbar’s close friend; and Bhagwant Das’s son Man Singh became Akbar’s most trusted general (NCERT, p. 25).

• Sawai Jai Singh (1699–1743) founded the new capital, Jaipur, in 1727, and moved from Amer. He brought Mughal painters from Delhi into his atelier, invited craftsmen to settle, and reorganised the Suratkhana, the place where paintings were made and stored. Vaishnavite in devotion, he commissioned many Radha–Krishna paintings; sets based on Rasikapriya, Gita Govinda, Baramasa and Ragamala show the hero strikingly resembling the king himself. The accomplished portraitist Sahibram worked in his atelier, as did Muhammad Shah.
• Sawai Ishwari Singh (1743–1750) patronised leisure scenes — elephant rides, boar and tiger hunts, elephant fights. Sawai Madho Singh (1750–1767) favoured records of his court life.
• Sawai Pratap Singh (1779–1803): under him the predominant Mughal influence receded and a reformulated Jaipur style — a blend of Mughal and indigenous features — emerged. He employed around 50 artists and was a scholar-poet devoted to Krishna; Gita Govinda, Ragamala and Bhagvata Purana got fresh stimulus. Copies were produced by tracing and pouncing, gold was used lavishly by the early nineteenth century, and Jaipur favoured large formats and life-size portraits (NCERT, p. 26).
• Named work: The Hour of Godhuli, Jaipur, 1780, National Museum, New Delhi.

All Eight Schools at a Glance

Use this table for last-minute comparison. Because it pairs each school with its region, it also works as a checklist for the map exercise.

How to Read a Rajasthani Miniature: Two Walkthroughs

A good visual analysis follows the same five steps every time:

1. Look for the inscription — a date, artist name, patron, or place (the Chunar Ragamala’s Persian inscription and the Maru Ragini’s Samvat both carry documentary weight).
2. Fix the narrative direction — does the story move left to right, top to bottom, or in compartments?
3. Identify the spatial device — oblique aerial perspective, a raised horizon, a central mound, or a flat ground.
4. Connect the scene to its literary source — Rasikapriya, Ragamala, Baramasa, an epic.
5. Name the stylistic markers — palette, facial types, vegetation, animal drawing — that point to a school.

Walkthrough 1: Raga Dipak from the Bundi Chunar Ragamala

Raga Dipak (from the Chunar Ragamala, Bundi, 1519; Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi) is set at night. The central couple sits in a chamber warmly lit by the flames of four lamps, two of which are innovatively shaped like ornate human figures.

The sky glitters with countless stars, and the moon is turning yellow — a signal that the night has progressed and the lovers have passed many hours together (NCERT, p. 19).

The folio also reveals the painting process: the finial of the domed palace protrudes into the yellow patch reserved for the verse, and except for the label “Dipak Raga” nothing is written.

The picture was evidently finished before the scribe’s verse was due — in this case the verse was never added, and the label served mainly as a reminder to the artist of what to paint.

Walkthrough 2: Krishna Swinging and Radha in Sad Mood

This Rasikapriya illustration was painted in 1683 by Nuruddin, who worked in the Bikaner court from 1674 to 1698, and is now in the National Museum, New Delhi (NCERT, p. 31). Its composition is stark and minimal.

A soft undulating mound in the centre divides the picture into two zones — it works as a pictorial prop that turns the urban setting into a tree-laden countryside and back. The architectural pavilion in the upper part qualifies that space as the palatial interior; the few trees on green grassland suggest outdoors and pastoral landscape.

The narrative therefore moves top to bottom, from indoors to outdoors.

The story follows Rasikapriya’s mood: Krishna, on a swing in the company of a Gopi, enjoys himself in the upper section. On learning of the rendezvous, the jilted Radha, stricken with grief, disappears into the countryside and sits alone under a tree. A guilt-ridden Krishna follows her, but there is no truce.

Radha’s sakhi (friend) learns of the fallout and takes on the roles of messenger and pacifier — she comes to Krishna, tells him of Radha’s misery, and implores him to appease her.

Common Mistakes Students Make

Structuring Answers to the Chapter Exercises

The chapter closes with five exercises. Each needs a different organisation; the table below gives the skeleton to follow in each case.

Throughout, anchor every claim with the chapter’s evidence: artist names, patrons, dates and painting titles. A descriptive answer that names the folio, its maker and its collection is always stronger than one that stays generic.

Memory Aids and a Mini Timeline

Eight schools: “Mighty Mewar Boasts; Kota Bikes; Kishangarh Jogs Jaipur” gives the initials M M B · K B · K J J — Malwa, Mewar, Bundi, Kota, Bikaner, Kishangarh, Jodhpur, Jaipur.

Six main ragas: “Big Mangoes Have Dense, Moist Slices” gives B M H D M S — Bhairava, Malkos, Hindol, Dipak, Megha, Shri.

Quick Revision Summary

Making process in one line: wasli surface → black or brown outline → glue-mixed mineral colours with gold and silver → camel and squirrel hair brushes → agate burnishing, all done as teamwork of master, specialists and scribe.

Dominant themes in one line: Vaishnava love of Radha and Krishna, Ragamala and Baramasa, epics and bardic romances, and the full record of court life.

For the rest of Class 12, browse the Class 12 notes collection, or search the wider CBSE revision notes index for other subjects.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who coined the term Rajput Paintings and why is it no longer used?

Anand Coomaraswamy coined “Rajput Paintings” in 1916 to separate these traditions from the Mughal School. His category included Malwa and the Pahari schools. Studies advanced, and the term is now obsolete — scholars use specific categories such as Rajasthani and Pahari instead (NCERT, p. 10).

Which Rajasthani school is considered the most stylised and why?

Kishangarh. Its figures carry a distinct facial type — arched eyebrows, lotus-petal eyes with drooping eyelids, a sharp slender nose and thin lips — with elongated bodies, lavish green and panoramic landscapes (NCERT, p. 22). The face is believed to derive from Bani Thani’s features.

What is the difference between a Raga and a Ragini in Ragamala paintings?

A raga is a male musical mode with a specific mood, time of day and season; each raga heads a musical “family” and has six female consorts, the raginis. Ragamala albums contain 36 or 42 folios arranged in these families. The six main ragas are Bhairava, Malkos, Hindol, Dipak, Megha and Shri (NCERT, p. 13).

Who painted Bani Thani and why does she matter to the Kishangarh School?

Artist Nihal Chand painted Bani Thani, working from Sawant Singh’s poem Bihari Jas Chandrika. Sawant Singh was the patron-poet; Bani Thani was his muse, a young singer whose sharp features are believed to have shaped the Kishangarh facial type (NCERT, p. 32).

Are Bundi and Kota paintings the same?

No. They were one kingdom until 1625, when Jahangir divided it. After that, Kota grew its own school (from around the 1660s) with an obsession for hunting, landscape as the real subject, calligraphic drawing and the double-lid eye — while Bundi kept its refined colour, lush nature and formal design (NCERT, p. 19–20).

Reference: NCERT Class 12 An Introduction to Indian Art Part II textbook, chapter The Rajasthani Schools of Painting.