Bedecked in jewellery, a very large figure wearing a kind of tilaka on his forehead sits in the lotus position under an arch. Either side of him are smaller figures raising their hands. Along the borders of the picture are numerous smaller figures.
This is the standard representation of a Jina in the heaven where he is reborn before his final incarnation on earth. In that final life on earth, he reaches omniscience and becomes a Jina.
The Jina is shown sitting in meditation posture on a throne inside a pavilion. He is flanked by attendants with hands upraised in a gesture of respect.
The smallest figures are musicians and dancers. The long protruding eye is a typical feature of Western Indian painting. Its origin is unclear.
Note the wealth of ornamentation in the background.
Here the Jina cannot be identified without an emblem. However, if the small figure at the bottom left is a lion, that points to the 24th Jina, Mahāvīra. Even without it, it is likely that the Jina shown here is indeed Mahāvīra, because he is considered the ultimate source of teaching.
On this page, the representation of a Jina has no specific relationship with a story or the text beside it. Even when a manuscript is otherwise not illustrated, as with this one, the image of a Jina, Mahāvīra, is frequently found at the beginning. Picturing a Jina gives an auspicious start to a manuscript.
There are several notable things about this page, namely:
The three circles along the central horizontal plane are symbolic reminders of the way in which manuscripts were bound when they were on palm leaf. Strings through holes in the paper were used to thread together the loose folios so the reader could turn them over easily. The circles are in the places where the holes would once have been.
The elaborate script is the Jaina Devanāgarī script, in a form which recalls calligraphy. It is used for writing many Indian languages, here for Prakrit.
There are a few notable features of this script, namely:
The text next to the image provides the general framework for the main narrative, and can be summarised as follows:
The Jambū-dvīpa-prajñapti is part of the Śvetāmbara canon. It belongs to the second group, the Upāngas, of which it is the sixth. Like all the texts belonging to the Śvetāmbara canon, its language is the variety of Prakrit known as Ardhamāgadhī.
The Jambū-dvīpa-prajñapti deals with the description and geography of the Jambū-dvīpa, which is the central continent of the Jain universe. The main part of the work deals with the seven lands and the six mountain chains that make up Jambū-dvīpa.
Among these lands, Bharata is the main focus of attention. The land is named after its ruler, the first Universal Emperor Bharata. The text gives an important place to legends connected with the life of Ṛṣabhanātha or Lord Ṛṣabha, the first Jina, and his eldest son Bharata. It also provides information about the divisions, mountains, lakes and rivers of the Jambū-dvīpa. Matters of time, which are inseparable from cosmology, are covered in the final part of the work.
The National Gallery of Australia provides this 12th-century image of a seated Jina. Under an ornate arch, the Jina takes the lotus pose of meditation. He is hard to identify without his emblem – lāñchana – but his closed eyes, unadorned figure and nudity indicate the statue was produced by the Digambara sect.
http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?IRN=128702&View=LRG
The National Gallery of Australia offers an elaborately illustrated page from a 15th-century manuscript of the Kalpa-sūtra. The 23rd Jina Pārśva sits in the lotus posture of meditation. He is easily identifiable from his seven-headed snake headdress.
http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?IRN=177853&View=LRG
This idol of a Jina shows him in the characteristic lotus position of meditation. He has a serene half-smile on his face, elongated earlobes and curly hair. The severe style and lack of clothing indicates that the 11th-century statue belongs to the sect of the Digambaras. It may depict the 24th Jina, Mahāvīra. The photograph provided by the Philadelphia Museum of Art is accompanied by a brief audio commentary on the statue.
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/64704.html?mulR=10908|7
A few photographs of Jina images in various styles, ranging from tenth-century sculptures to a contemporary depiction, provided by Professor Frances W. Pritchett of Columbia University in New York.
Bodleian Library. Prakrit d. 4. Unknown author. 1589
British Library. Or. 13700. Unknown author. 1445
British Library. Or. 13454. Śrīcandra. 1644
British Library. Or. 2137 ms. B. Śrīcandra
British Library. Or. 13623. Yaśo-vijaya. 1733
British Library. Or. 13478. Mānatunga. 1762