Page from a Manuscript of the Kalpasutra (Primary Title)
Unknown (Artist)
Although paper began replacing palm fronds as the favored medium for manuscripts around 1400, the new paper pages continued to imitate the long, horizontal shape of their palm-leaf predecessors. Dated 1416, this manuscript is an early surviving paper copy of the "Kalpasutra" (Manual of Rituals). One of Jainism’s most important canonical texts, the "Kalpasutra" consists of three parts: the lives of the twenty-four Tirthankaras or Jinas, the genealogy of the Jain pontiffs, and the rules for monks during the rainy season. The first and longest part dwells mostly on the life of Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara, but then touches briefly on the earlier Jinas (Victorious Ones). Shown here is the green-skinned Parshvanatha, twenty-third Tirthankara, enthroned at the apex of heaven. On the following page, Queen Shivadevi holds her newborn, Neminatha, the twenty-second Jina. The thirty-seven vividly colored and lively paintings punctuating this manuscript’s 111 folios signal a period when the previously rigid conventions of the Western Indian style were suddenly loosened.
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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