Description

Lines 1 to 5 of the text contain the end of Śakra’s monologue. The king of the gods reflects that it has never happened, never happens and never will happen that a Jina is born into a brahmin family. Mahāvīra’s embryo has taken form in the womb of the brahmin Devānandā. Śakra decides to ensure that the baby is swapped with the embryo of the kṣatriya lady Triśalā. Triśalā is the wife of King Siddhārtha of the Kāśyapa clan.

In lines 5 to 7, he calls his commander-in-chief Hariṇaigameṣin and starts explaining to him what he will have to do.

Other visual elements

The central diamond filled with golden ink is a decorative ornament. Usually in Jain manuscripts there is one in the centre of recto pages, like here, and there are three on versos. The red borders of the margins are also filled with golden ink.

Above the main text, the smaller script explains in Sanskrit some of the phrases in the main text.

On the last line of the page the number 21 is the paragraph number.

Script

The elaborate script used is the Jaina Devanāgarī script, which is here like calligraphy. It is an old type in the way the sounds e and o are notated when used with a consonant, and is known as pṣṭhamātrā script.