Beneath a triple parasol a naked white figure sits in the lotus position of meditation in an ornate temple structure. Two smaller figures make gestures of worship to him.

This painting shows two Jain devotees paying homage to the eighth Jina Candraprabhanātha or Lord Candraprabha in the temple dedicated to him in Karanja.

The Jina is identified through his symbol, the crescent moon. As is usual in Digambara style, he is shown entirely naked without any ornamentation. The triple parasol over his head underlines his status as a king in the spiritual sense.

Other visual elements

This Ādityavāravratakathā manuscript is quite decorative. There are broad floral borders at the top and bottom and 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.