Textiles in Ancient Jain Kalpasutras

The wide variety of textiles depicted in a single Kalpasutra set – religious Jain manuscripts – awes me.

The subject of the paintings are the royalty and therefore it is expected that they would be surrounded by royal textiles – costumes, cushions, ceiling fans etc.

A small showcase of the beauty of textiles in a Jain Kalpasutra.

The dots appear to depict the fine mulmul bodycloth worn by monks.

If only we could tell from the 2-dimensional pictures whether the designs are prints or weaves or embroidery or embellishments!

jaina mishra

Sept 2014

By Jaina Mishra

By wovensouls