Folio 2 from a Parshvanatha Charitra (Life and Stories of Lord Parshva) of Bhavadeva-suri: Monk preaching to a disciple with a lay audience (recto); Text (verso) (c. 1275–1300): Art, History and Detai

Folio 2 from a Parshvanatha Charitra (Life and Stories of Lord Parshva) of Bhavadeva-suri: Monk preaching to a disciple with a lay audience (recto); Text (verso) (c. 1275–1300) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This leaf comes from the beginning of a manuscript about the life and nine past lives of the penultimate Jina (liberated being in the Jain religion), known as Parshva. Composed by a learned Jain monk in 1255, it opens with praises exalting the Jinas. This manuscript was produced not long after the text gained popularity, since the style of the painting accords with others made during the third quarter of the 13th century. The language of the text is Sanskrit with the incorporation of numerous elements drawn from regional vernaculars.

Object facts

• Title: Folio 2 from a Parshvanatha Charitra (Life and Stories of Lord Parshva) of Bhavadeva-suri: Monk preaching to a disciple with a lay audience (recto); Text (verso)
• Date: c. 1275–1300
• Culture: Western India, Gujarat
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and ink on palm leaf
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.7 x 32.4 cm (2 5/8 x 12 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1971.125

A detail from the museum

The hole in the center of the page was meant for binding cords to pass through.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

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.
• Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., and Richard J. Cohen. Essays on Jaina Art. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in association with Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2003.

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.