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Trisala realizes that Mahavira lives, from a manuscript of the Kalpasutra (Book of Ritual)

approx. 1450

Asian Art Museum

Asian Art Museum
San Francisco, United States

The monk Padmasundara was the first Jain scholar to visit Akbar's court. During his time there, he composed a Sanskrit treatise on aesthetics at the emperor's request and dedicated it to Akbar. When Padmasundara died, he left behind his personal collection of manuscripts, which Akbar later donated to the Jain community. Padmasundara's library almost certainly included a copy of the Kalpasutra, a text central to the Jain tradition that tells the life stories of the twenty-four Jinas.
According to a sixteenth-century source, "I [Akbar] deeply loved [the Jain monk] Padmasundara, moon of the learned, like a friend. Then, by the power of fate, he was taken by the gods. After that I grieved, as when a wishing tree in one's own garden has been felled by the wind."

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  • Title: Trisala realizes that Mahavira lives, from a manuscript of the Kalpasutra (Book of Ritual)
  • Date Created: approx. 1450
  • Location Created: India
  • Physical Dimensions: H. 4 1/2 in x W. 10 1/2 in, H. 11.4 cm x W. 26.6 cm Each page
  • Rights: Public Domain
  • Medium: Ink, opaque watercolors, and gold on paper
  • Credit Line: Asian Art Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. David Buchanan, Ms. Jane Lurie, and Dr. Joanna Williams, 1995.58.15
Asian Art Museum

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