JAIN ANTHOLOGY OF DEVOTIONAL TEXTS

MS 5298
MS Short Title JAIN ANTHOLOGY OF DEVOTIONAL TEXTS
Text 1.JAIN ANTHOLOGY OF DEVOTIONAL TEXTS CENTRED ROUND THE PRINCIPAL TEXT OF THE SAMAVASARANA PUJA 
2.DEVOTIONAL HYMNS TO THE VARIOUS PRINCIPAL JINAS (MAHAVIRA, ADINATH OR RSABHANATH, NEMINATH) OR ALL 24 OF THEM, AS WELL AS THEIR CHARACTERS AND PRESCRIPTIONS FOR THEIR WORSHIP (ARATI)
Description MS in Jain prakrit on paper, Ropar, Punjab, India, 1826, 173 ff. (complete), 27x18 cm, single column, (20x12 cm), 19 and 22 lines in Devanagari book script, by Giridhari Lal, 17 full-page gouache illustrations, numerous ink drawings and 15 diagrams of the Samavasarana Puja.
Binding Ropar, Punjab, India, 1827-1828, woven pattern cloth over floral design paper, bound with a thick cord through a central hole, and as a single quire, being a poti adapted to Hindu book production.
Provenance 1. Sam Fogg, London.
Commentary This is a manual for a Jain layman, with the abstruse concepts of Jain belief rendered simple for everyday living. Of the diagrams the first 5 depict the horizontal levels of the complex from the outer to inner sanctums; the following 10 diagrams depict the vertical levels of the Samavasarana Puja, culminating in the Samavasarana itself. The detailed organisation of the Samavasarana Puja described and depicted, reflects broader Jain cosmological systems. Most of the illustrations depict the realms of the Jinas and the trees and plants found therein, including the sanctuaries of the 'five unsurpassable gods', beneath the 'crescent of perfection', a Samavasarana, the bejewelled throne room where the Jina imparts his teaching , and the symbols and attributions of a universal ruler with a wheeled palanquin. A colophon states that the MS was completed in Samvat 1884 (1826 AD) in Rupanagar in Samvat.
Place of origin Punjab, India
Dates 1826