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Transfer of the Embryo of Mahavira, Folio 12 (recto), from a Kalpa-sutra
c. 1475–1500
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 12.5 x 25.7 cm (4 15/16 x 10 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Western India, Gujarat
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Edward L. Whittemore Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The tiny captions written in Sanskrit to the right of the painting identify the subject of this scene: “abduction of the embryo” and “transfer of the embryo.” The embryo is the unborn founder of the Jain religion.
In this miraculous episode, a goat-headed divinity who presides over miscarriage and childbirth gently takes the embryo in his cupped hands away from the reclining Brahmin lady in the scene above. Below, he carries it to a queen, who will be the birth mother.
