Article: Dreams

Dreams of an expectant mother
Image by British Library © CC0 1.0 (Creative Commons Public Domain)

In the Śvetāmbara tradition, the first detailed description of each of the 14 dreams is found in the Kalpa-sūtra. This is a sacred book written in Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit, the first part of which narrates the lives of the 24 Jinas, starting with that of Mahāvīra.

The dreams of Mahāvīra’s two mothers are given in considerable detail four times in this tale, as follows:

1. When at first the brahmin lady Devānandā is pregnant with the future Mahāvīra, she has the 14 dreams announcing that her child will become a Tīrthaṃkara.
2. When the embryo has been transferred to Triśalā, a lady from the kṣatriya caste, in which a future Jina must be born, she has the same dreams.
3. After Triśalā awakes from these dreams, she tells her husband, who understands that they predict the birth of a boy who will be the glory of the family. As the night has not yet ended, Triśalā goes back to bed but decides to stay awake. She does not want possible bad dreams to counteract these auspicious dreams so she listens to good religious stories (Jacobi 1895: 240).
4. The next morning, the king orders the hall of audience to be ceremoniously prepared and readies himself to welcome the dream-interpreters for whom he has sent. They tell him that the 14 dreams are experienced by mothers of universal monarchs or Jinas (Jacobi 1895: 246).

The mothers of three other Jinas are described as having the same dreams but they all experience the dream of the bull first, not second. These Jinas are:

• Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva
• Ariṣṭaneminātha or Lord Ariṣṭanemi
• Ṛṣabhanātha or Lord Ṛṣabha.

Together with Mahāvīra, these individuals are the four most popular Jinas. The text does not go into detail about the dreams of the mothers of the other 20 Jinas.

First six auspicious dreams
Image by British Library © CC0 1.0 (Creative Commons Public Domain)

When the brahmin lady Devānandā has her 14 dreams, they are listed in a stanza.

When Triśalā has the same dreams the identical stanza is used, but is followed by a description of each of the dreams.

This description is in sophisticated prose. It features extremely long descriptive compounds, characteristic of old Indian poetical style. The physical appearance of the animals, the goddess Śrī and the various objects is a focus of description. There are detailed comparisons, for example when describing colours, along with rich vocabulary.

Other devices used in this lyrical style include listing and meticulous description. An example of the first is the list of a large variety of flowers in the description of the garland in dream number 5 while the birds of the lotus pond in dream number 11 are listed in detail.

Instances of the second device include the lively nature of the animal portraits and the account of Śrī. The goddess’s body is described in the traditional fashion suitable for non-human beings, which goes from the feet to the head. She is said to be seated on a lotus while elephants sprinkle her with water using their trunks. This element is often shown in iconography.

Some scholars assert that the mention of a ‘garland of dīnāra-coins’ as an ornament around Śrī’s neck suggests that the dream section dates from a period when this type of coin became popular in India. If so, it is perhaps later than the rest of the text (Shah 1987: 18).

On the other hand, it has been shown that the prose description contains some archaic stylistic features. The main one is some compounds that are written in metrical prose (Jacobi 1885).

Second six auspicious dreams
Image by British Library © CC0 1.0 (Creative Commons Public Domain)

The dreams of the pregnant woman are represented in several stock ways in manuscripts of the Kalpa-sūtra. The artist may use all of them or choose a few.

A common method is to show the pregnant mother lying on her bed, with the 14 dreams pictured in small size at the top, arranged in one or several rows. In the case of Mahāvīra, both his mothers, Devānandā and Triśalā, have the dreams. The dreams can thus be shown once or twice in the same manuscript, as in these two folios in the British Library. The traditional sequence of dreams may be rearranged, depending on the space available.

Painters sometimes copy the scene for the sections dealing with the births of Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva, Neminātha or Lord Nemi and R̥ṣabhanātha or Lord Ṛṣabha. This is not found frequently, however, so it seems as if the 14 dreams have always been closely connected with Mahāvīra alone.

When portraying the 14 dreams, painters might show them in a group or individually. If the dreams are illustrated as a group, either they are all the same size or the fourth one, the goddess Śrī, is much larger than the others.

Depicting each dream individually is less common because it uses a lot of space. A rare instance is provided by the manuscript ‘Hg’, shown in W. Norman Brown (1934: figures 21 to 33). Here 13 paintings are devoted to the 14 dreams, with the flag and the pitcher in one illustration. But this manuscript contains 64 miniatures in total, which is unusually high.

Sometimes several of the dreams are shown in successive small vignettes. This manuscript held in the British Library under the shelfmark Or. 13455 has individual pages featuring the:

• garland
• goddess
• full vase
• lotus lake
• ocean of milk
• palace and pile of jewels
• fire.

Another comparatively rare artistic decision is where the illustration of the auspicious dreams is spread over successive pages. This example found in the British Library under the shelfmark of Or. 13701 shows on different pages the:

• first six dreams
• second six dreams
• last two dreams.

When only one dream is represented individually, it is always Śrī. An explanation could be that as a female deity her protective role is primary, and she is more recognisable than objects.

Monk and pupils
Image by Chandu Shah © Chandu Shah

The 14 dreams play a specific part in the festival of Paryuṣaṇ, which is celebrated towards the end of the rainy season. The dreams are involved on the fifth day of the festival, which lasts seven days. On that day, the monks read aloud or narrate the portion of the Kalpa-sūtra dealing with Mahāvīra’s birth to the lay community gathered in the ascetics’ dwelling-hall.

In addition, the dreams are displayed to the congregation in the form of silver models, which are put on trays or hung from the ceiling. The Śvetāmbara Mūrti-pūjaka Jains organise auctions to choose who gains the right to perform religious acts. In this case, the winner has the right ‘to swing the dream, to garland it with āsopalav leaves or flowers, to garland it with [a] gold or silver necklace, and to place the dream on a table in the center of the upāśray‘ (Cort 2001: 155; 153–157 for full description and two photographs).

Displaying the dreams as sacred objects, making offerings to them and also staging the dreams as tableaux are important components of celebrating Paryuṣaṇ that involve the active participation of the Jain lay communities. For example, the 2005 Paryuṣaṇ celebration by Oswal Jains from north-west London demonstrates some of these practices.

Double garland and moon
Image by Ravin Mehta © Ravin Mehta

More generally, the 14 dreams of the Śvetāmbara or the 16 dreams of the Digambara are a central part of Jain religious life. They are a commonplace sight in many temples in the form of:

• bas-reliefs or sculptures on temple walls

• metal objects that are free-standing, or on wooden and metal stools and platters used for making offerings (an example is Plate III in Johnson 1931)

• mural paintings of all periods, including contemporary works, in Śvetāmbara or Digambara temples (Hegewald 2009: figures 11 and 266).

There are numerous instances of classical sculptures from the medieval period, such as the:

• exquisite panel showing Triśalā on her bed fanned by attendants, with the 14 dreams above her in the form of an arch in the Pañcāsara Pārśvanātha Temple at Patan, Gujarat (good photograph in Hegewald 2009: figure 12)

• architrave with the 14 dreams in the hall of the main shrine in the Kharataravasahi Caumukha at Delvada at Mount Abu, Rajasthan

• 14 dreams with a Jina’s mother form part of a panel on the fourth rectangular ceiling in the Mahāvīra temple at Kumbharia, North Gujarat (Dhaky, Moorti 2001: figure 59)

• 14 dreams with a Jina’s mother form part of a panel on the seventh rectangular ceiling in the Mahāvīra temple at Kumbharia, North Gujarat (Dhaky, Moorti 2001: figure 62)

• 14 dreams with a Jina’s mother above the door lintel of the Pārśvanātha temple at Kumbharia, North Gujarat (Dhaky, Moorti 2001: figure 134)

• 14 dreams form part of a ceiling panel portraying the life of Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva at Kumbharia, North Gujarat (reproduced, for instance, in Shah 1955: figure 83)

• wooden panel presenting the 14 dreams at Patan (Shah 1955: figure 87).

• door frame of a cell in the Śāntinātha shrine and other shrines at Khajuraho (Shah 1987: 18).

Fourteen auspicious dreams
Image by Victoria and Albert Museum © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Together with the eight auspicious symbols, the 14 dreams have proven one of the favourite themes on manuscript covers – called pāṭhuṃ in Gujarati – since the 18th century.

There are two fine examples of manuscript covers depicting the 14 dreams held in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The Ethnographic Museum in Antwerp has a good selection of such covers. They are made of either cardboard covered with cloth or painted wood. They demonstrate features of the pictorial style of the regions where they were made

See pages 101 to 103 of Van Alphen 2000 for photographs and Appendix IV of Shah 1978 for references to other covers. The 1978 book Treasures of Jaina Bhandāras contains a photograph of a 20th-century cover embroidered with tiny pearls on page LXX. This is found on D-70 of the PDF version that can be downloaded from the Jain eLibrary once a free account is created.

For another wooden book-cover showing episodes from the life of the 23rd Jina, Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva, including the dreams, see pages 2 to 12 of volume V of the Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art.

Śrī and elephants
Image by British Library © CC0 1.0 (Creative Commons Public Domain)

Invitation scrolls or vijñapti-patras are formal letters inviting a leading monk of a certain monastic group to spend the next rainy season in a certain place. A community of lay Jains sends these letters, the local merchants often sending these on behalf of the wider group.

These invitations take the form of long scrolls with text and paintings. The text consists of poetical description and praises of mendicants and the Jinas. Generally, the opening paintings are the 14 dreams or the eight auspicious symbols. The tradition of painting the dreams in invitation scrolls can be explained by the connection with the rainy season and thus the major Śvetāmbara festival of Paryuṣaṇ.

An example of an invitation scroll is in the Jain collection at the British Library, under the shelfmark of Or. 16192.

These invitation letters are found in Rajasthan and Gujarat from the 17th century onwards. They are a speciality of the Śvetāmbara Kharatara-gaccha and Tapā-gaccha communities.