After the Mughal court weakened, India’s painters did not stop working. They went to smaller courts in the plains and the hills. Each court asked the same question in its own way: how do you paint a king, a god or a story?
This lesson follows three answers: the Bundi and Kota schools of Rajasthan, and the Pahari schools of the Himalayan foothills. It also shows how exams ask about them.
Regional school: a style of painting tied to one court or region. Painters there share colours, lines and favourite subjects. Think of a regional accent in speech. In exams, a school is named after its place, like Bundi or Kangra.
Miniature painting: a small, detailed painting, often on paper, made for a king or a book. Many are only a few inches wide. Artists used fine brushes and bright mineral colours. Most Indian court schools worked in this format.
Patronage: money and support that a ruler gives to artists. A court that pays painters gets paintings made in its own taste. When patronage ends, the style fades. This single idea explains how these schools rose and fell.
Pahari: the painting of the hill kingdoms of the Himalayan foothills. The word comes from the Hindi word for hill. It names a family of related styles, not one style. Basohli, Guler and Kangra are its best-known branches.
What Is a Regional School of Indian Painting?
Why did regional schools appear at all?
Courts of Jaipur, Bikaner, Bundi and Kishangarh were tied to Mughal rule. Their painters mixed Rajasthani and Mughal features with ease. They also built their own habits for colour, landscape and figures.
After the Mughal empire broke up, small rulers became the new patrons. Painting then spread to Himachal, Rajasthan, Bundelkhand, Malwa and other regions. Each new place and ruler pushed the art toward an idiom of its own.
Sources: India Art and Culture (archive.org) · IGNCA illustrated Ramayana manuscripts.
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Regional schools of painting grew as small rulers became new patrons.
How Are the Bundi and Kota Schools Different?
Where does Bundi fit among the Rajasthan schools?
Bundi is one of the Rajasthan schools. The Rajasthan Board syllabus lists it beside Malwa, Mewar, Kota, Bikaner, Kishangarh, Jodhpur and Jaipur.
Bundi had military contacts with the Deccan. Because of this, its painters took up Deccani style and colour schemes. Bikaner painters did the same.
So a Bundi painting is not purely Mughal or purely Rajput. It carries a southern touch as well.
Sources: Rajasthan Board Class 12 Drawing syllabus · India Art and Culture (archive.org).
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Contact with the Deccan gave Bundi painting a Deccani flavour.
How are Bundi and Kota related?
Kota began as part of Bundi. It was separated from Bundi, its sister state, in the early seventeenth century. Because of this link, Kota work can be hard to tell from Bundi work.
Kota is best known for large, dramatic hunting scenes. Painters watched each detail with care. These scenes were made from about 1720 to 1870.
So remember the pair this way. Bundi is the parent school, and Kota is famous for the hunt.
Sources: India Art and Culture: Kota section · Panjab University syllabus.
How do four Rajasthan schools compare?
Which school is known for what?
Use this table to sort the schools. Each row gives one fact an exam might ask.
| School | Key fact | Link to others |
|---|---|---|
| Bundi | Took Deccani style and colour ideas | Sister state of Kota |
| Kota | Hunting scenes, about 1720 to 1870 | Separated from Bundi in the early 17th century |
| Bikaner | Also took Deccani stimulus | Linked to the Deccan through military contact |
| Kishangarh | Stylised, elongated portraits in a late Mughal style | Under Raja Sawant Singh, a poet and devotee |
The Kishangarh portraits are often set against a wide landscape view.
Sources: India Art and Culture: Rajasthan schools.
Check 3
Kota is best known for hunting scenes.
How Did the Pahari Schools Grow in the Hills?
Why did hill painting stay different for so long?
The Pahari region was small. It was only about three hundred miles long and a hundred wide. It lay in the Himalayan foothills, far from the plains.
Its many small Rajput kingdoms stayed free of Mughal influence for longer. Their rajas sent fewer officers and soldiers to the imperial army. Mughal emperors rarely visited the hill courts.
The wide Punjab Plains kept these kingdoms in relative isolation. Their culture was close to Rajasthan, but their painting grew on its own path.
Sources: India Art and Culture: Pahari region.
How did Basohli, Guler and Kangra develop?
The origins of Pahari painting are still unclear. Its earliest link is with the court paintings of Basohli. These show a taut line and bold, refined colour. Basohli pictures of Krishna and Devi have an almost primitive intensity.
Big change came in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Nadir Shah took Delhi in 1739. Artists trained in the Mughal style then left for provincial courts to find patrons.
At Guler, Chamba, Jammu, Kangra and Nurpur, they used their fine technique on Hindu poetry and devotion. The mature Pahari style joined Mughal drawing with Pahari lyricism.
Sources: India Art and Culture: Pahari chapter · Panjab University syllabus.
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The mature Pahari style joined Mughal drawing with local lyricism.
Why Did the Schools Spread, and Why Did They Fade?
What kept these schools alive for so long?
Courts needed painters, and painters needed courts. When the Mughal court lost its grip, artists moved to the Rajput and hill kingdoms. There they found rulers who wanted pictures of gods, poems and portraits.
Patronage was the engine. A short-lived revival of old styles followed as Mughal power weakened in the eighteenth century.
This pattern repeats across the schools. New rulers brought new tastes, and new tastes made new styles.
Sources: IGNCA illustrated Ramayana manuscripts · India Art and Culture (archive.org).
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Pahari and Rajasthani painting ended mainly because artists lost their patrons.
How did the great painting traditions come to an end?
The hill kingdoms were invaded by the Gurkhas. The Sikhs then annexed them in the early nineteenth century. At the same time Rajput patrons grew fond of European paintings and photographs.
Together these changes took away the artists’ patronage. In effect they marked the end of India’s great painting traditions.
So the same force that built the schools, patronage, also ended them.
Sources: India Art and Culture: decline · IGNCA.
Which Stories Did the Painters Choose?
How were the Ramayana and Krishna painted?
The love of Radha and Krishna was a favourite theme in both Rajasthan and the hills. Artists showed it at every level, from the spiritual to the erotic, and often blended the two.
The Ramayana was painted too. Mewar manuscripts of the mid-seventeenth century have bold outline drawing, a vibrant palette and several scenes in one frame.
Illustrated manuscripts from Rajasthan are complex and could take years to finish. Pahari Ramayana series are less complex but delicate in outline and colour.
Except in Orissa, where palm leaf was used, the material in the rest of India was paper.
Sources: India Art and Culture: Radha and Krishna · IGNCA.
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Mewar Ramayana manuscripts show several consecutive scenes in one frame.
Where can illustrated Ramayana manuscripts be seen?
Mewar copies from the mid-seventeenth century are in the Prince of Wales Museum, the British Library and the Rajasthan Oriental Research Centre, Udaipur. Malwa copies are in Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi.
An imperial Mughal copy sits in the Sawai Man Singh Museum, Jaipur, and one copy of Akbar’s Ramayana is in the Freer Gallery, Washington.
Colonial rule took many valuable manuscripts out of India. The IGNCA has documented them in reprographic form.
Sources: IGNCA collection list.
What Do Exams Ask About These Schools?
How do syllabi group the schools?
University art-history syllabi teach three groups. The Rajasthani group has Mewar, Bundi, Malwa, Kishangarh and Kota. The Pahari group has Basohli, Guler and Kangra. The Deccani group has Ahmednagar, Bijapur and Golconda.
The Rajasthan Board lists prescribed Pahari pictures, such as Rasamanjari from Basohli and a picture of Balwant Singh looking at a painting with Nainsukh. The syllabi also advise visits to museums and art sites.
Sources: Panjab University History of Art syllabus · Rajasthan Board Class 12 Drawing syllabus.
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University syllabi place Basohli, Guler and Kangra under the Pahari school.
Which books are standard references?
Teachers point students to a short list of books. Each is tied to one school:
- Pramod Chandra, Bundi Painting, Lalit Kala Akademi, 1959.
- W.G. Archer, Indian Paintings from Punjab Hills, 1973.
- M.S. Randhawa, Basohli Painting, 1959.
- B.N. Goswamy and E. Fischer, Pahari Masters, 1992.
- S.C. Welch, Gods, Kings and Tigers: The Art of Kotah, 1997.
Match the author to the school. That is enough for most book-based questions.
Sources: Panjab University reading list.
Which region is Basohli painting linked with?
This question appeared in CDS (I) 2026. It asked which region Basohli, a bold and intense style of miniature painting, belongs to. The options were Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.
The answer is Himachal Pradesh. Basohli is the earliest link in the Pahari story, and the Pahari school belongs to the Himalayan foothills.
See the full question on the CDS (I) 2026 paper.
Sources: India Art and Culture: Pahari.
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Basohli painting is the earliest style linked with the Pahari school.
What should you remember?
These are the points to keep ready. They cover the main schools and their causes.
- Bundi: Deccani touch; sister of Kota.
- Kota: hunting scenes, about 1720 to 1870.
- Pahari: Basohli, Guler, Kangra; Nadir Shah, 1739.
- Decline: Gurkha invasion, Sikh annexation, European taste.
A good tip: link each school to its patron and place. That makes the facts easy to recall.
Sources: India Art and Culture: summary · Panjab University · Panjab University.
MCQ on Indian Regional Painting Schools
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