This page consists of stanzas 8 to 10 of this Sanskrit version of the popular story of Kālaka. This is not the beginning of the text, but it is the first page of this manuscript that is available. Verses 1 to 7 are missing.

The text emphasises the virtue of the monk Kālaka and recounts how his sister Sarasvatī becomes a nun. Kālaka goes to the city of Avanti to preach and Sarasvatī and her fellow nuns follow him there.

Other visual elements

There are several notable things about this page, which is not in perfect condition as the edges are slightly torn.

The Kālaka story is often an appendix to Kalpa-sūtra manuscripts. In many Kalpa-sūtra manuscripts, there is a clear intention to make the manuscript a valuable and remarkable object in itself. This often holds true for the manuscripts of the Kālaka story as well. Here this aim is signalled by the:

• shape and style of the script, which is close to calligraphy
• use of gold ink for the red-edged border lines and ornamental diamond shape
• division of the text into two equally-sized panels, separated by a 2-centimetre margin containing a golden diamond
• blue ornamental motifs around the golden diamond in the centre.

There is a single ornamental diamond because this is the recto side of a folio.

This version of the Kālaka story is told in poetry. Verse numbers are at the end of each stanza. They are often in red, like here. On this page are the following numbers:

• 8 on line 3
• 9 on line 5.

This means that this page contains verses 8 and 9 and a large part of verse 10.

Script

The elaborate script used is the Jaina Devanāgarī script, which is here like calligraphy. There are a few notable features of this script.

Firstly, it is an old type in the way the sounds e and o are notated when used with a consonant, known as pṛṣṭhamātrā script.

There are red vertical lines within the text marking out verse divisions. Single red vertical lines indicate where a verse is divided in two, while double red vertical lines are found at the end of the verse.