Miniature paintings are drawn on a very small scale. If enlarged, they would amaze one with their exactitude. One would fondly recall to mind miniatures on the theme of Radha-Krishna, those of Ragmala series and Nathdwara paintings. Handmade colours, particularly the basic ones – red, yellow and blue – develop strong contrasts as also delicate details of characters and their surroundings. A prominent style in the genre is the Pahari style with its variants like Kangra in which countless illuminated frames of scriptures are made and events described in them are delicately illustrated. Such beautiful miniatures, on glazed well laid-out 170 pages, of Artibus ASIAE and Niyogi Books’ A Sacred Journey (2021), written by Karuna Goswamy and B N Goswamy, capture an art lover’s attention even as he thumbs through it before reading its valuable text. The Goswamys, a scholarly couple, were commissioned as long back as twenty years ago in Geneva to translate the illustrated Kedara Kalpa text found written in Sanskrit, which details an arduous but determined journey, inspired by the spiritual faith, of five Shaiva ascetics to Kedara. They are frail of body but their resolve to reach the abode Kailash of Shiva, the Supreme Lord of…