Some Illustrated Jain Manuscripts

SOME ILLUSTRATED JAIN MANUSCRIPTS JEREMIAH P. LOSTY THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired several illustrated Jain manuscripts of great interest. The earliest is the Uttarddhyayana- sutra, one of the four Mulasutras of the Svetdmbara Canon. The scribe provided no colophon: but the miniatures, in the Early Western Indian style, fix the date of the manuscript as the early sixteenth century and its provenance as Gujarat or southern Rajasthan, in western India. The Prakrit text of the Sutra is accompanied by an anony- mous avacurni in Sanskrit; the Department already possesses one other manuscript of this commentary. Or. 2095. The new manuscript has 131 folios in all, measuring 26X II cm. In common with most Hindu and Jain manuscripts of this date, which still retain the ancient format of palm-leaf manuscripts, the text is written parallel to the longer side of the paper folios, which were left unbound. The Prakrit text is written in Jain Ndgari script in the centre of each folio, with the Sanskrit commentary, written in much smaller characters, above and below. Illustrated examples of the Uttarddhyayana- sutra are far from numerous - few are to be found outside India and the present manuscript is the first to be acquired by the Department. It has been numbered Or. 13362. The Uttarddhyayanasutra^ is a work in thirty-six chapters, each being a sermon on various aspects of Jain doctrine and discipline, and is thought by orthodox Jains to represent the actual words of Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, whose traditional date of death is 526 B.C., 1974 being the 2,500th anniversary of the event. The commentators have enlivened the somewhat dry material of the sermons with numerous tales illustrating the points made therein.^ Jain artists utilized these popular stories as well as the actual SUtra when painting miniatures in manuscripts of this text. The one under consideration has thirty-seven miniatures in all, one illustrating each chapter, with a final one concluding the whole work. They measure approximately 11 X 9 cm and are surrounded by red and blue plain borders. The artist's palette is severely limited to the colours sanctified by tradition: red for the backgrounds, gold for the figures and architectural features, etc., and blue for haloes and other large areas; while details and smaller areas are coloured green, black, white (both unpainted paper and white paint), and crimson. Our artist has been content to work within the traditional framework laid down for the illustrations of the Jain sacred texts and has not sought to extend the frontiers of the style in either design or colour as did several artists in the fifteenth century. None 145 the less the rarity of illustrated copies of this work and the consequent lack of specific models from which to work have forced him to use his own taste and imagination to a much greater extent than would have been the case had it been a Kalpasutra^ which he was illustrating, with thousands of precedents to be drawn upon. In many instances the miniatures differ from other published manuscripts of this text, and our artist has often produced drawings of great charm in which the line is everything and colour of little importance, for example the lively hunting scene in fol. 57b, Harikesa's refusal of Bhadra (fol. 37b), the sins committed by an errant monk on fol. 57b (fig. 6), a cat playing with a mouse on fol. io6b (fig. 14), and Samudrapala's birth on fol. 71b (fig. 9). In addition to the colouring, the miniatures display the usual characteristics of the Early Western Indian style - complete absence of modelling and perspective, the majority of faces in three-quarter profile, and bodily distortions including sharply pointed nose and chin and projecting further eye. The garments worn are those usual in Jain manuscripts of this period.-* The monks' robes are represented by white dots or diagonal lines on gold paint (fig. i, top), often with the lines of the body and undergarment visible beneath (fig. 4); larger figures of Mahavira and other important monks sometimes have patterns formed by clusters of white dots on their robe (figs. 12, 13). When lying asleep both monks and laymen wear the same kind of brief dhoti as do ascetic Brahmans (com- pare the sleeping men in figs, i and 2 with the Brahman magician in fig. 4). Nuns' robes are the same as those of monks except that they cover the nape of the neck and even occasionally the head (as in the seated nun in the top half of fig. 15). Laymen generally wear a dhott formed by coloured stripes on the gold paint along with a dupattd or scarf, usually multi-coloured. A garland of white jasmine flowers hangs round their neck and they wear large, round earrings, bracelets, and anklets (see the prince in the lower part of fig. i). Important non-monastic figures drawn on a large scale wear a dhoti of black stuff with gold patterns (fig. 4, top). Laywomen wear a dhoti and waist-length coli^or bodice, with a dupattd, and ornaments like those of laymen (fig. 16). The hair of both laymen and laywomen is worn long, arranged in a chignon on the back of the head or the nape, that of the women being tied with a fillet. Religious figures both male and female wear their hair short. Deities and royal personages wear a peaked diadem or mukuta. Laymen have a U-shaped red tilaka mark on their forehead and women the tikd spot. The mouth-cloths used by Jain monks to protect microscopic life are prominent in the miniatures and are held out at arm's length to indicate speech, while the whisks used to sweep the path before them are often seen tucked under the arm. Architectural features, drawings of animals, trees, chariots, and other such details are of the usual type. As mentioned above, when illustrating a manuscript of the Uttarddhyayanasutra the artist was much freer to use his imagination than in the case of the Kalpasutra in which the limited number of subjects suitable for artistic representation prevented any devia- tion from precedent except in the case of the very finest artists. On the contrary, in the former case the relative lack of precedent and the immense variety of stories told in the commentaries ensure that few manuscripts of this text are alike, and the copy under consideration is no exception. Five miniatures in it are completely different from those 146 Fig. I Fig. 2 Fig. 4 Or. 13362 (i) fol. 12b, (2) fol. 13b, (3) fol. i6b, (4) fol. 19b which have already been published by W. Norman Brown.^ These are fols. 13b, i6b, 53b, 85b, and iiib. Those miniatures which are partly different from Brown's are: fols. 12b, 57b (left), 67b, 90b, 93b, ioib, io6b, and 119b. In all of these the artist has utilized for his source different stories from the commentators or different verses from the actual text of the Sutra. In only one instance, however, has he demonstrably used his imagination in painting a scene, unless of course it was taken from a hitherto unpublished manuscript. This is in fol. 57b (left), showing the bad monk striking his superior with a saucepan and kissing a woman (fig. 6): in neither instance is there any authority in text or commentaries. Moreover, the precise interpretation of some of the scenes still remains doubtful (fols. 13b, 53b, 6ib, 90b, and nib). In these instances it is possible that the artist has misunderstood the purport of some of his now lost models. The following is a list of the miniatures: 1. Fol. ib. Lesson i, the Discipline of Monks. Mahavira preaching the Sutra to a disciple at his feet. 2. Fol. 5b. Lesson 2, Hardships. Top: Mahavira sits preaching. Bottom: various monks are seated listening or engaged in kdyotsarga meditation, which leads to the spirit freeing itself from the body. 1,. Fol. 12b. Lesson 3, the Four Requisites. In three registers, and illustrating several commentatorial stories. Top: the Pontiff Aryaraksita trying to choose his successor.^ Middle: the ascetic who befriends King Brahmadatta and his wife who will not let him accept the gifts of the grateful king;^ and the gambler with magic dice and his victim.^ Bottom: Muladeva dreaming of the moon f the tortoise and his relatives living in a weed- encrusted pond;''' the axle and its pin in the ocean;" and the prince who has to perform the rddhdvedha in order to win his beloved, i.e. pierce with an arrow the left eye of a wooden doll placed on top of a pole with eight wheels revolving in front of the doll, four clockwise and four anti-clockwise, aiming by looking at the target's reflection in a cauldron of oil.'^ Only the first two stories are represented in Brown's manuscripts^^ (fig, i). 4. Fol. 13b. Lesson 4, Impurity. A problematic miniature. In the centre stands the ever-watchful Bhdrunda bird with two heads.'-* Above Agadadatta lies asleep on a couch, below he sits in a wakeful position.^^ xhe upper figure lacks the tilaka mark on his forehead and ought therefore to be a monk, but neither the text of the Sutra nor the commentaries provide a reason for such an interpretation. Brown's manuscripts have no paralleP^ (fig-2). 5. Fol. i6b. Lesson 5, Death against One's Will. Top: the punishments of hell for those who lead evil lives.'^ Middle: a sinner being thrown into a cauldron of boiling fihh; and the charioteer who drives along a bad road and laments over his broken axle.'^ Bottom: the goatherd who was engaged to kill the king by the latter's brother.^^ Brown's manuscripts all show scenes of men on their deathbeds^'' (fig.

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