Bedecked in jewellery, a very large figure wearing a kind of tilaka on his forehead sits in the lotus position under an arch. Either side of him are smaller figures raising their hands. Along the borders of the picture are numerous smaller figures.

This is the standard representation of a Jina in the heaven where he is reborn before his final incarnation on earth. In that final life on earth, he reaches omniscience and becomes a Jina.

Here the Jina is the 24th, Mahāvīra, whose life is first narrated in the Kalpa-sūtra. He is shown sitting in meditation posture on a throne inside a pavilion. He is flanked by attendants with hands upraised in a gesture of respect.

The smallest figures are musicians and dancers. The long protruding eye is a typical feature of western Indian painting. Its origin is unclear.

Note the wealth of ornamentation in the background.

Other visual element

As with many Kalpa-sūtra manuscripts, there is a clear intention to make the manuscript a valuable and remarkable object in itself. This aim is signalled by:

• the shape and style of the script, which is close to calligraphy
• the profusion of gold in the paintings
• the gold in the paintings instead of ordinary colours
• the decorated borders with floral arabesques in blue
• the blue arabesques above and below the text
• the three circles filled with red ink and surrounded by blue floral motifs.

The three red circles along the central horizontal plane are symbolic reminders of the way in which manuscripts were bound at one time. Strings through three holes in the paper were used to thread together the loose folios so the reader could turn them over easily. The circles are in the places where the holes would once have been.

Script

The elaborate script used for the main text is the Jaina Devanāgarī script. It is used for writing numerous Indian languages, here for Prakrit.

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.

In this particular folio there are occasional rings above the writing. These notate the nasalised vowels and are used instead of simple dots. There are examples above the first line.