PROBABLY GUJARAT, WESTERN INDIA, CIRCA 16TH CENTURY

The Kalpasutra, one of the principal sacred texts of Svetambara Jainism, recounts the lives of the twenty-four jinas, including a detailed biography of Mahavira, the last jina. Read during the annual festival of Paryushan, the text became one of the most frequently illustrated works in Jain manuscript painting. Many of the present folios depict key episodes from Mahavira’s life, including the miraculous transfer of his embryo by the deer-headed deity Harinegamesi from the Brahmin woman Devananda to Queen Trishala, whose fourteen auspicious dreams foretold the birth of a jina. Other leaves illustrate episodes from the lives of Parshvanatha and Rishabhanatha.

From the twelfth century onwards, lavishly illustrated copies of the Kalpasutra were commissioned by Jain patrons across Gujarat and Rajasthan. Although paper gradually replaced palm leaf as the preferred support, manuscripts retained the elongated horizontal format of earlier examples. The present folios are characteristic of the finest western Indian Jain painting, with jewel-like palettes of red and ultramarine heightened with gold, compartmentalised compositions, and figures rendered in the distinctive angular style with prominent projecting ‘fish-eye’ profiles. Such manuscripts were presented to temple libraries (bhandars) as acts of piety and merit and played a central role in the Jain practice of jnanapuja (the veneration of sacred texts).