Kalpa-sutra manuscript with 24 illuminations (c. 1475–1500): Art, History and Details

Kalpa-sutra manuscript with 24 illuminations (c. 1475–1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Though paper manuscripts would have been wrapped in cloth rather than bound with string, conservative manuscript producers located the place for the string's hole with a red dot. Dating back to at least the early centuries of the first millennium, the text is written in Sanskrit in an Indian script known as devanagari. The smaller text written in the margins is a commentary that discusses the meaning of the main text.

Object facts

• Title: Kalpa-sutra manuscript with 24 illuminations
• Date: c. 1475–1500
• Culture: Western India, Gujarat
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 12.5 x 25.7 cm (4 15/16 x 10 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1932.119

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hollis, Howard C. "A Jaina Manuscript." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 21, no. 2 (1934): 19–21.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• 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.