Five figures sit in two rows, all in the lotus posture of meditation. Each figure sits in a small temple structure with pennants flying from the domed roof. In the middle of the lower row is probably the door of a Jain temple.

These figures are five of the 24 Jinas. In the Digambara Jain tradition, the Jinas are always represented entirely naked and without any ornamentation. The central figure in the first row can be identified as the 23rd Jina, Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva, from the snake-hoods above his head and the green colour of his body. He is one of the most worshipped Jinas.

Other visual elements

This Ādityavāravratakathā manuscript is quite decorative. There are broad floral borders at the top and bottom and there are treble red lines along the edges of the page.

Script

The elaborate script used for the main text is the Jaina Devanāgarī script. It is used for writing numerous Indian languages, although here it is used for Gujarati and Hindi.

There are a few notable features of this script:

• it is an old type in the way the sounds e and o are notated when used with a consonant, known as pṛṣṭhamātrā script
• the red vertical lines within the text divide the long sentences into smaller parts, but are not necessarily punctuation marks.