Birth of Mahavira, folio 40 (verso) from a Kalpa-sutra (c. 1400): Art, History and Details

Birth of Mahavira, folio 40 (verso) from a Kalpa-sutra (c. 1400) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A queen and her golden newborn lie on a swing, gazing at one another as two attendants hold fly whisks to honor them. The infant is Mahavira, founder of the Jain religion, who lived during the 500s BC in northern India. Though palm leaf was preferred for sacred texts, Jain communities transitioned to the more readily available material of paper during the 1300s. A hole in the central red dot was made for a binding string. The margin notes beginning with the “=” sign are comments explaining the text.

Object facts

• Title: Birth of Mahavira, folio 40 (verso) from a Kalpa-sutra
• Date: c. 1400
• Culture: Western India, Gujarat
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 9.4 x 28.4 cm (3 11/16 x 11 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1976.27.b

A detail from the museum

Under the swing bed is a box decorated with two geese, filled with paan (betel nut, lime, and spices wrapped in betel leaf).

Collection credit

Gift of Dr. Norman Zaworski

Further reading listed by the museum

• Leach, Linda York. Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1986.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.