Curator’s Preface

Jainism is an ancient Indian religion, at least a generation older than Buddhism, with which it has much in common. At its heart are an ethic of nonviolence, a respect for all living beings, and a belief in the existence of a permanent soul, whose true nature is obscured by an individual’s accumulated karma. The goal of Jain religious practice is ultimately to end the painful cycle of rebirths (sam . sāra) and attain liberation from all suffering. This is done by the practice of asceticism and the careful elimination of the passions that lead us astray. When all the obstructions have been removed and the influx of new ones prevented, the soul in its pure state is freed from bondage.

The Jain community is divided into two groups: monks and nuns, who have renounced the world and practice stringent austerities; and laymen and women, who remain in everyday life and observe the vows ordained for householders. While liberation is possible only for those who have renounced the world, lay devotees earn merit by supporting the monks and by donating temples and images, and throughout history wealthy Jain merchant families have been the mainstay of the religious community. Jain monastics eventually formed two separate groups: the Śvetāmbaras, whose monks wear white robes; and the Digambaras, whose monks reject even the possession of monastic robes and go about naked. While Jain communities once flourished in most parts of India, today Jains are most numerous in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan in western India, Madhya Pradesh in central India, Maharashtra in the Deccan, and Karnataka in the south.

The Jinas

All Jains pay homage to the founders of the faith, who are called Jinas (Conquerors) and also Tīrthakaras (a term that has been interpreted to mean both “Founders of the Tīrtha, the fourfold Jain Community” and “Makers of the Ford that gives safe passage across the waters of worldly existence”). Jains believe in a series of time periods of descending prosperity. There have been twenty-four Jinas in our present time cycle, the last of whom was Mahāvīra, an older contemporary of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni, according to most scholars. The twenty-four Jinas of the present cycle—only two of whom scholars agree were historical figures—have been liberated from worldly existence and dwell in a special realm reserved for perfected beings. Nonetheless, they are accessible to worshipers in the here and now through their teachings and their images—although certain groups reject image worship. The Jain universe is a complex structure of multiple continents and encircling oceans; even now there are said to be other Jinas, who continue to preach the Jain doctrine in distant lands beyond the reach of most mortals living in our part of the universe. Prayers are also addressed to these Jinas and their images in sacred shrines. The

Tīrthakaras, or Jinas, are the focus of the exhibition organized in conjunction with the publication of this catalog; they are sculpted in stone, cast in bronze, and painted. The presence of the Jina creates a uniquely Jain sacred space, and we also display maps that depict the vast Jain cosmos and the distant worlds where Jinas still dwell and paintings that portray the earthly temples and pilgrimage places that the twenty-four Jinas of our age sanctified by their presence.

Jain imagery and doctrine

The art forms created for the Jains have reflected basic aesthetic principles shared with Buddhists and Hindus. In this respect this publication and exhibition offer the visitor an overview of some of the highest moments of the Indian artistic tradition as a whole. But Jain art, like Jain literature, also developed its own distinctive presence, both in its iconography and in stylistic character. Medieval hymnists often sang of the purity of the Jinas and their absolute freedom from passion and anger. In contrast to Hindu deities, the hymnists stress, the Jinas hold no weapons, for they are freed from anger; theirs is the path of total nonviolence. Unlike the Hindu gods, the Jinas are never accompanied by a spouse, for they have left behind sensual pleasures. For one hymnist, the southern Indian Digambara monk Padmanandin (ca. eleventh century CE), the highly polished stone or the shining metal of the Jina images serves as a metaphor for the absolute purity of the liberated being. Padmanandin describes a worshiper waving a lamp in front of an image, its flames reflecting off the figure’s chest, like the blazing fire of the Jina’s meditation, which has destroyed every last trace of bad karma. When the devotee makes an oblation of unblemished grains of rice, it is to an image of the Jina, “who is unblemished by the objects of the senses that lie in wait to deceive ordinary mortals.”

The stiff upright standing pose of the Jinas (the Conquerors) vividly demonstrates the belief that they have been victorious over obstacles within, unmoved by objects of the senses —although they have not been indifferent to the fate of humankind. Often large, such standing images convey an impression of solid strength and are the visual counterpart of the poet’s metaphor that the Jina could no more be moved by the passions than the cosmic Mount Meru could be shaken by a breeze. Images of the Jina absorbed in meditation might be considered the perfect visual expression of this final verse of Padmanandin’s poem, “Arhat, noble one, the monk Padmanandin rejoices in your great virtues. Well do I know that you do not need my worship, for you have attained everything that is to be attained. And yet we worship you out of our own need to find salvation. The peasant plows his field for the crops that he will harvest for himself and not for the sake of the king.”

The Jina’s quest for spiritual perfection was also a quest to aid all living beings. The stories of the lives of the Jinas, depicted in illustrated manuscripts such as the ones illustrated here and shown in the exhibition, remind us that the Jinas’ pursuit of liberation was also an act of supreme compassion, for having attained omniscience, the Jinas share their salvific knowledge with living beings from different realms of rebirth. At their enlightenment, gods, animals, and humans crowd into a divine preaching assembly, or samavasaraa, to hear the Jinas preach. The Jinas establish the Jain tīrtha, the community of monks and nuns and lay men and women who continue to cherish the teaching. Inspired by the Jain

teachings, those who have renounced the world strive for ultimate liberation, and with lay men and women, work to alleviate the sufferings of their fellow beings. As another medieval monk-poet, Jasadevasūri, wrote, “A person whose mind is steeped in the teachings of the Jina gravitates towards what is virtuous; such a person feels the suffering of every creature who is in pain.”

The decision to focus this publication and the exhibition on the Jinas was a curatorial decision. The Jain pantheon is rich and complex, and a hint of its diversity may be seen in the attending deities that accompany some of the Jinas in this volume. But it is above all the figure of the Jina that conveys most immediately the central values of Jainism. A fourteenth-century story of the conversion of Haribharda, one of the most famous of all Śvetāmbara monks, makes this clear. According to this story, proud of his own learning, the Brāhma Haribhadra was firmly converted from Hinduism to Jainism when he was taken to a Jain temple and shown the image of the Jina. In his joy, he recited these verses, “His glance ripples with tender waves of compassion, while his face is serene and gentle. He seems to be the embodiment of tranquility. Everything around him is calm and his body radiates contentment. Surely he is the god of gods, the only one who can destroy birth, old age and death, for no other god in this world looks anything like this.”

Jain sacred spaces

For the exhibition, I have conceived of the first area as containing examples of the different kinds of spaces sanctified by the presence of the Jinas. While some of these spaces are easily accessible to ordinary human beings, others lie in distant regions of the vast Jain cosmos. The enormity of the Jain cosmos is suggested by the large painting of the Jain universe in the shape of a man (Cat. No. P 21). The small sector at his waist depicts the only places where humans live and may achieve liberation. Circular in shape, this area comprises three land masses or “continents.” Each ring-shaped continent is surrounded by an ocean. Humans live in two-and-a-half of these three continents. Being born as a human being has a particular significance in Jainism, for it affords the best opportunity to follow the Jain teachings. This may be one of the reasons why depictions of the human world of two-anda-half continents became so popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The maps of the two-and-a-half continents shown in this section of the exhibition (Cat. Nos. P 21, P 22, P 23, P 24, and P 26) provide details of the rivers, mountains, and even the cities in the various continents. The central continent is called Jambūdvīpa, and Bharata, which contains India, lies at its southern end. This is where the twenty-four Jinas of our time period preached in the past. Mount Meru, the hub of Indian mythic geography, lies at the center of Jambūdvīpa. On the maps can be seen a series of parallel lines to either side of Mount Meru. This is the wonderful land called Mahāvideha, where it is believed several Jinas continue to preach. Visible at the corners of such maps are temples that lie outside the continents depicted, suggesting the existence of Jinas, their sanctuaries and images, even in the remotest regions of the cosmos where humans cannot reach.

Also in the exhibition are maps of a pilgrimage site closer to home, Mount Śatruñjaya in the state of Gujarat (Cat. Nos. P 29, P 30, and P 31). All but one of the twenty-four Jinas of

our time period are said to have visited Mount Śatruñjaya and numerous saints achieved liberation there. Part record of a real pilgrimage, part imagined re-creation of an ideal sacred realm, these richly detailed paintings embody the spiritual intensity of those who undertook the arduous pilgrimage to such a holy site.

A very different kind of space sanctified by the presence of the Jina is exemplified by the ritual diagram, or yantra, with the Jina Mahāvīra in the center and a mantra (Cat. Nos. P 35 and P 36). Diagrams like this were given to monks at the conclusion of the ritual through which they were installed in a position of authority in the monastic community. Both the image of the Jina in the center and the words of the mantra empower the diagram with special force. Few examples of these “Vardhamānavidyā paas,” or “Paintings with the Mantra of Vardhamāna ( Mahāvīra),” have survived, and scholarship on the ritual use of yantras and mantras in medieval Jainism is in its infancy.

In the exhibition we have tried to create an intimation of the vast scope and power of the Jain vision of its sacred cosmos, a place where the viewer may encounter the Jinas as they have been represented by devotees across the Indian subcontinent throughout history.

Stone sculpture

The earliest stone sculpture in the catalog (Cat. No. S 01) and exhibition, the head of a Jina from Mathura datable to the fifth century CE, reminds us that this holy city located between Delhi and Agra, was a major center of Jainism as early as the first and second centuries before the common era. The faith also flourished at an early date in eastern India—in Bihar, Bengal, and Orissa—and presented here is a black stone image of the first Tīrthakara, abha (Cat. No. S 02), which was carved under the Pāla dynasty of Bengal at a time when Buddhist imagery was also flourishing in the region. Also included are several standing and seated Jinas from central India (Cat. No. S 04 and S 05), contemporary with the famous Hindu temples at Khajuraho. There is also a standing Jina from Karnataka of the twelfth century (Cat. No. S 13), belonging to the Hoysaŀa dynasty, whose rulers commissioned lushly ornate Hindu temples at Belur and Halebid. Magnificent Jain temples of white marble were erected at Ābū and Ranakpur in Rajasthan and we have a fine thirteenth-century marble frame for an image (Cat. No. S 11).

Bronzes

Some of the earliest Indian religious bronze images were made for the Jains. Archaeologists have uncovered Jain bronzes across India—for example in Chausa in Bihar, Hyderabad in the Deccan, Akota in western India, Bhopawar in central India, and Hansi in Punjab. Because the oldest examples are rarely inscribed and are difficult to date precisely, a comprehensive history of Jain bronzes is yet to be written. We hope, however, that by bringing together many important examples, this project will stimulate studies on the patronage, origins, and contexts of bronze imagery. Later medieval bronzes more often bear inscriptions and thus can be placed more securely within a context. The elaborate bronzes with multiple Jinas and attendant figures presented here (Cat. Nos. S 20, S 21, S 22, and S 27) give ample indication of the growing sophistication of the tradition. A bronze figure from the Co¯ ŀa dynasty in southern India (Cat. No. S 29) rivals in beauty the more

familiar Hindu bronzes of the region. Some of the most refined and distinctive works in the history of Indian art were produced for Jain communities.

Paintings

In addition to the large paintings of the cosmos and the panoramic scenes of pilgrimage, Jain painting is represented here by several outstanding examples of manuscript illustrations. The earliest Jain manuscripts were done on palm leaf; extant examples do not date before the mid-eleventh century. The manuscript paintings shown here have all been done on paper. The Śvetāmbara Kalpa Sūtra, which describes the lives of the Jinas, was frequently illustrated, and a number of these manuscripts are known from Gujarat and Rajasthan in western India. This “Western Indian Style” of Kalpa Sūtra painting was derived from classical Indian painting as seen in the Ajanta and Bagh Buddhist caves. In the tiny frames available for illustration, however, the brightly colored images were flattened and abstracted in a vital, lively manner. Presented here are several folios from a complete Kalpa Sūtra manuscript dated 1472 CE and made in Patan, Gujarat (Cat. Nos. P 01–P 07). Also included are a number of pages of elegant Kalpa Sūtras from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, also of the fifteenth century (Cat. Nos. P 08, P 09, and P 19). Jaunpur was a center of Jain painting and the Jaunpur manuscripts often used considerable gold. Illustrated narrative painting of legends of the Jinas has continued to the present day, always adjusted to the expectation of new audiences. We include examples of different regional styles (Cat. Nos. P 11 and P 12). The Kalpa Sūtra was not the only text to be illustrated and included here are examples of an illustrated manuscript that describes the Jain cosmos (Cat. Nos. P 25–P 28).

Digambara manuscript painting is represented in one folio from a private collection (Cat. No. P 15). An important group of Digambara paintings presented comes from Mysore in southern India (Cat. Nos. P 16–P 20). Relatively late in date, these brightly colored paintings depict groups of Tīrthakaras and events in the lives of the Jinas. Similar paintings can be seen adorning the walls of temples today.

Concluding remarks

This catalog and related exhibition take their place with others that have been giving the arts of the Jain communities the recognition that they so richly deserve. The essays that precede the catalog entries illuminate different aspects of Jain art and religion. Padmanabh Jaini, John Cort, and I have written on the Jain cosmos, so strikingly depicted in the cosmic maps illustrated here. Kim Plofker has written on the mathematics of the Jain cosmos; several of the maps include numbers and mathematical calculations that she explains in her essay. Paul Dundas discusses the lives of the Tīrthakaras, and Julia Hegewald has written on temple architecture and pilgrimage in Jainism. A second essay by John Cort discusses contemporary Digambara ritual and its art. Sonya Quintanilla has written on Jain sculpture and Robert Del Bontà on Jain painting. A detailed description of the individual objects in the exhibition forms the second half of this volume.