Siddhartha, the sage and dream diviner, and two wrestlers, from a manuscript of the Kalpasutra (Book of Ritual)

This page is from a manuscript describing biographies of the twenty-four important Jain teachers (Jinas or “Enlightened Ones”). The lives of all Jinas follow the same cosmic pattern: from a birth predicted by auspicious dreams, to stages of austerity, knowledge, and enlightenment. Such texts were donations to a monastery by pious Jains and used for public recitation during the Paryusana rainy-season festival, which coincides with the birth of the Jina Mahavira. These sacred manuscripts, written on paper, retained the horizontal format of traditional palm-leaf books, with the painted circles here recalling string holes originally used to secure the loose palm leaves together.