Text, Folio 46 (verso), from a Kalpa-sutra (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Text, Folio 46 (verso), from a Kalpa-sutra (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Parshva stands in a yogic posture of meditation, bearing the hardship of the elements, unmoved. When stormwaters threatened his life, serpents shielded him so that he could complete his meditations and reach liberation. One cobra stretched his seven-hooded canopy over his head like an umbrella, while a serpent king and his wife praise him. The abstract gold lines on the blue background represent the waters that rose to the level of his shoulders. In this painting, the image of Parshva wears a white lower garment, which indicates that this manuscript was made for the prominent branch of Jainism that allows monks and nuns to wear white robes.

Object facts

• Title: Text, Folio 46 (verso), from a Kalpa-sutra
• Date: c. 1500
• Culture: Western India, Gujarat, late 15th-early 16th century
• 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: 1932.119.46.b

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.

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.