Manuscript Painting 013

The earliest Jain manuscripts are on palm leaves in the horizontal format dictated by the material. When paper was adopted, the horizontal format was kept, but the manuscripts remained unbound and were, like the palm leaf manuscripts held together loosely by twine strung through the leaves and kept between rigid wooden covers. Where the holes for string would have been on this leaf, decorative bosses were painted. The copy from which this leaf comes was dispersed before being properly catalogued and the colophon has not been completely documented. What is left of the colophon says that the manuscript was prepared at the request of Sana and Jutha, who lived at the port of Gandhar near Broach at the mouth of the Narmada River. The text is Sanskrit in Nagari script. The story is of the last Tirthankara, Mahavira. One painting is of Indra in his heaven. On the folio with text (see recto) Harinegameshi, the commander of Indra's army, is returning from a mission to bring to Indra the embryo of Mahavira from the womb of the woman who conceived him. Harinegameshi's next assignment will be to exchange this embryo with one growing in another woman, so that Mahavira will be born of a woman of the warrior Kshatriya caste.