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Illustrating the Bhaktāmara Stotra
Phyllis GRANOFF
The University of Michigan Museum of Art has in its collection 18 folios of an unidentified Jain manuscript assigned to the 18th century and to Sirohi.' Two more folios of the same manuscript are in the Los Angeles County Museum and are also unidentified. Photographs of the folios are available on the museum websites, and one of the folios in Los Angeles is published by Pratapadatiya Pal in the Peaceful Liberators, where it is identified simply as "Lustration of a Jina" and assigned to the early 19th century Gujarat. Sirohi seems to be more likely as the place of origin of the manuscript. The Michigan manuscript closely resembles a Vijñaptipatra from Sirohi now in the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library and dated 1761. It also shares many features with a Vijñaptipatra in the Delhi Museum, also from Sirohi and dated 1737.4 The illustrations have been separated from the text, which has made their identification difficult. In fact, comparison with an intact manuscript belonging to the Oriental Research Institute in Ara, Bihar, and recently digitized and put on the web by the International Digamber Jain Organization makes it clear that the Michigan folios belong to an illustrated Bhaktāmara Stotra. The Bhaktāmara Stotra enjoyed and continues to enjoy unusual popularity among all Jains. Scholars have argued that the hymn was composed by a Svetāmbara monk sometime around the 6th century. Digambaras also count its author as one of their own and depict him in the paintings as a Digambara monk. The Digambara version of the hymn contains 48 verses as against the 44 of the Svetāmbara version. Illustrated manuscripts of the hymn are rare, and I
Accession numbers 1975.2. 153-180. The manuscript is 28.9 cm x 18 cm ( 11 3/8 in 7 1/16 in.). Photographs courtesy of the museum. 2 The Peaceful Liberators: Jain Art from India, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1994, figure 37, page 50. This is one of the opening folios of the illustrated Bhaktamara, which typically begins with scenes from the life of the first Jina, Rşabhanātha. Accession numbers AC 1975.2.165;178. 3 This is also illustrated in Pal, pp. 85 and 251.
I thank Elena Preda, University of Bologna, for this information. 5 http://www.idjo.org/Manuscript.asp?id=4&i=0 6 Madhusudan Dhaky and Jitendra Shah, Mānatunga aur unke Stotra, Ahmedabad: Sharadaben Chimanbhat Educational Research Center, 1997. See also John Cort, “Devotional Culture in Jainism”, Mānatunga and his Bhaktāmara Stotra", in James, Blumenthal, ed., Incompatible Visions: South Asian Religion in History and Culture Essays in Honor of David Knipe, Madison: University of Wisconsin, Center for South Asia, 2006, pp. 93-115.
