Painting from a Kalpa-sutra: Indra Praises the Embryo of Mahavira in the Womb of the Brahman Woman Devananda (c. 1450–75): Art, History and Details

Painting from a Kalpa-sutra: Indra Praises the Embryo of Mahavira in the Womb of the Brahman Woman Devananda (c. 1450–75) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Until recently, and especially during the 1800s and early 1900s, the paintings in South Asian manuscripts were excised and mounted as individual works of art. These two paintings from a Jain manuscript of the Kalpa-sutra have been separated from the text and mounted with gold-flecked borders, like pictures in an album.

Object facts

• Title: Painting from a Kalpa-sutra: Indra Praises the Embryo of Mahavira in the Womb of the Brahman Woman Devananda
• Date: c. 1450–75
• Culture: Western India, Gujarat
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper; 18th century gold flecked paper border
• Dimensions: Painting: 9.5 x 6.8 cm (3 3/4 x 2 11/16 in.); Overall: 22.3 x 17.7 cm (8 3/4 x 6 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1925.1339

A detail from the museum

The four-armed king of the gods, Indra, got off his throne to kneel in praise of the conception of the 24th Jina Mahavira.

Collection credit

Gift of J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• Vinaya Sagar, Mahopadhyaya, Makund Lath, and Chandramani Singh. Kalpasūtra: eighth chapter of the Daśāśrutaskandha of Bhadrabāhu, with Hindi and English versions and coloured reproductions of original 16th century miniatures. Jaipur: Prakrit Bharati, 1977.
• 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.