Kalaha Preaches to King Sahr - Mahavira’s Departure with Indra - Adoration of a Tirthankara c. 1500
anonymous
toned paper
water colours
possibly oil pastel
handmade artwork painting
coloured pencil
underpainting
watercolour bleed
watercolour illustration
mixed media
watercolor
This small-scale, anonymous, Jain painting depicts a scene from the life of Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara (spiritual teacher). The miniature illustrates the moment when Mahavira, who is leaving the world to achieve liberation, is being carried away by Indra, king of the gods. The artwork is an illustration from a manuscript and uses a vibrant color palette of reds, blues, and yellows.
Comments
The Kalpasutra (Book of Ritual) is a major canonical text that provides an extended biography of Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. It is the principal text of the Svetambara Jains, rulers of the Gujarat state in western India and committed art patrons. Because the commissioning of a Jain text for a temple library was deemed an act of religious merit, probably the more closely a copy resembled previous versions, the more ritually "correct" it was thought to be. This accounts for the stylistic unity found in several fifteenth-century Jain manuscripts displayed here.
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