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Description

The large figure of a monk sits on a raised seat under a canopy, facing a smaller ascetic. They are in characteristic Śvetāmbara robes. They each hold their mouth-cloths in front of them, which signals that they are talking.

Above the smaller monk is the sthāpanācārya, symbolising teaching and teachers.

This illustration depicts a senior monk teaching another monk. The teacher’s higher rank is shown by his larger size and throne-like seat. The listener is a junior member of the monastic community.

Other visual elements

In many Kalpa-sūtra manuscripts, there is a clear intention to make the manuscript a valuable and remarkable object in itself. Here this is achieved in a rather modest manner. This aim is signalled by the:

  • ornamental motif in the central margin
  • calligraphic script.

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

This manuscript belongs to a rather early phase of Kalpa-sūtra paper manuscripts, the beginning of the 15th century. This is evidenced by the:

  • format of the paper, which is rather narrow
  • old system of folio numbering, using ‘letter-numerals’, which is found here in the left-hand margin showing two letters with a zero between them.

In the system of ‘letter-numerals’, each number or digit from 1 to 10 is represented by a different letter. The number 20 is represented by a particular letter, which is different from those used for 30, 40 and so on. The number 100 has its own letter, while 200 has another letter, 300 its particular letter and so on up to 400. Numbers with more than one digit, such as 34 or 258, are represented by two or three of these letters placed one above the other. On this page the sign for 100 is placed above a 0 and the sign for 1, meaning 101.

The red disc in the middle of the right-hand margin contains the number 101. This is the folio number. It is again written in smaller script in the bottom corner of the page.

Script

The elaborate script is the Jaina Devanāgarī script, in a form which recalls calligraphy. It is used for writing numerous Indian languages, here for Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit and Sanskrit.

The lines in smaller script above and below the main text and in the margins are explanations in Sanskrit of phrases found in the central part. The two small parallel lines like slanted = after the words are meant to separate the explanations in the margins. The parallel lines around words in the text indicate which words are glossed. This page is fully packed with them.