Jain Mandala

Major forms of Jain painting include small illustrations in manuscripts and monumental diagrammatic images that present cosmological subjects. This large painting consists of a map-like rendering of the middle world, one of three worlds that comprise the Jain universe. Located between the celestial realm and the lower world of the damned, this middle world is where mortals and all sentient beings live and is the place from which liberation becomes possible. The composition takes the form of a series of concentric circles representing continents and oceans. In the center lies the continent of Jambudvipa, location of India and Mount Meru, surrounded by two oceans and two-and-a-half more continents. The oceans are filled with various aquatic creatures, while the continents contain humans, animals, rivers and land features, including the five cosmic mountains, shown along the horizontal axis of the painting as yellow disks with pairs of multi-colored arch-like forms. Enshrined Jinas, the Jain teachers, occupy the vertical axis of the continents and also appear in the four corners of the painting.