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XXII, 54 
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BULLETIN

Mr. George Peabody Gardner
President of the Museum

AT the regular quarterly meeting of the Trustees, held October 16, Mr. Gardner was elected President of the Board to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Thomas Allen and to serve until the annual meeting in January. Mr. Gardner was elected a Trustee May 6, 1915, in a place of Mr. Gardiner M. Lane, former President, deceased. Mr. Gardner has been appointed Chairman of the Visiting Committee to the Department of Prints in 1914, and has continued to hold that position. Since 1915 Mr. Gardner has been a member of the Finance Committee of the Board, and at various times a member of the Committee on the Museum. 

Catalogue of the Indian Collections

Part IV: Jaina Paintings and Manuscripts

By Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Keeper of Indian and Muhammadan Art, 4to, pages 74, with 39 plates reproducing 186 subjects. The illustrated manuscripts catalogued in the present volume are sacred texts of Jainism, and the small paintings also listed represent various subjects of Jain theology and ritual. Internal evidence indicates that all may be dated from the early fifteenth to the early seventeenth century, and several bear dates within that period. The descriptive list of the paintings and manuscripts is prefaced by chapters on Jainism: its legends, cosmology, literature and paintings, with a bibliography. The plates reproduce the greater part of the miniatures and paintings listed. Price, $3.75 postpaid. Apply to the Secretary of the Museum.

THE faith called Jainism appears to have arisen in India simultaneously with Buddhism in the sixth century B.C. Both religions aim to point the individual toward the perfect spiritual life; and each builds its own way of salvation upon the foundations of the ancient Hindu ideas of transmigration (Samsara) and inexorable causation (Karma). Buddhism emphasizes ethics; Jainism metaphysics. While to Buddhism the soul does not exist as a separate entity, to Jainism it is immortal and may attain divinity. Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, called the Jina, is also named the "Finder of the Ford" across the ocean of universal death and rebirth.


The two religions have had an opposite history. Buddhism is nearly extinct in India, while counting its hundreds of millions of adherents elsewhere in eastern Asia. Jainism has survived in India alone. It was once important politically, and still is influential through the character and wealth of its adherents. The percentage of crime is asserted to be lower among the Jains than among the Hindus, Muhammadans or Christians in India; and it has been estimated that half the mercantile wealth of India passes through the hands of the Jain laity. Jainism has left its impress upon Indian art in architecture, sculpture and painting. The Jain shrine at Mt. Abu, built of marble with elaborate sculptured ornament, has been called the most superb temple in India and comparable only with the Taj Mahal.

Illustrated manuscripts like those of the Museum collection are very rare even in Jain libraries. The pages retain the form of the strips of palm leaf or birch bark used before the introduction of paper. The illustrations are colored drawings about three and one-half inches high and two and one-half to three and one-half wide, placed as if pasted on the page. The faces and figures depicted are most remarkable in character, and, like the composition of the different scenes represented, adhere strictly to canonical forms. The illustration reproduced below is the first page of a manuscript of the Kalpa Sutra, a sacred book held in high esteem by the Jains for a thousand years. The book relates the life Mahavira. This manuscript is dated 1497, and, with the possible exception of a similar manuscript in the British Museum, is the oldest known. An inscription states that it was prepared on behalf of a certain merchant, his family and colleagues. Several leaves from the manuscripts are at present shown in the Indian Corridor. G.

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Mahavira enthroned. Commencement of a ms. of the Kalpa Sutra   A.D 1497