Cleveland Museum of Art

The Lion's Cave with Sthulabhadra and His Sisters, Folio 60 (verso), from a Kalpa-sutra

Date: c. 1450
Medium: Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
Culture: Western India, Gujarat
Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

This manuscript is open to a page with a painting that depicts the story of a Jain monk who transformed himself into a composite beast when his sisters, two nuns, came to visit him. Terrified, the nuns ran to a senior monk, at the lower left, who admonished their brother for his overly prideful display of power. Remarkably, this story is not told in the text itself, which contains only their names among a list of prominent Jain teachers. The painting would remind a reader of the story that is found in many commentaries to the text. The three red dots in the margins and the center occur only on the reverse side of the page; the obverse side has only one red dot in the center.

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