The Fourteen Dreams of Queen Trishala, folio 14 (recto), from a Kalpa-sutra
1488
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1488
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Fourteen Dreams of Queen Trishala, folio 14 (recto), from a Kalpa-sutra is a 1488 unspecified by Unknown, a Mughal Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a bright red page with fourteen small squares, each showing a queen dreaming of a different animal or object—a white elephant, a lion, a moon. These dreams are from a Jain holy book. They predict the birth of Mahavira, the religion’s founder. The artist used bold colors and simple shapes to tell the story clearly, not realistically. To see more like this, look up western india, gujarat.
Accounts of the lives of liberated beings of the Jain religion are illuminated with special emphasis on the miraculous circumstances leading to the birth of its historical founder Mahavira (500s BCE). For Jains, liberated beings are not reborn after they die; they exist eternally in a blissful meditative state. After a divinity miraculously implanted the embryo of Mahavira into the womb of Queen Trishala, she dreamed of 14 good omens. Later in the manuscript is an intimate moment between the mother and her special newborn. The bold and costly palette lends the paintings an otherworldly…
Read the full account in the museum source.
