Paper Conservation: Decisions & Compromises

The Conservation and Digitization of Jain Manuscripts at the
Victoria and Albert Museum
Michael Wheeler | Nicholas Barnard | Karine Bovagnet | Richard Mulholland
Victoria & Albert Museum, Londen, UK; Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria
Fig. 1
Introduction
The Victoria and Albert Museum has a collection
of Svetambara Jain manuscript pages from western
India, including numerous examples dating
from the mid 15 th to early 16 th centuries, which
form a core part of the V&A’s collection of early
paintings from the Indian sub-continent.
Many of the manuscript pages in the V&A collection
are richly illustrated, having been acquired
as works of art. Among these is a nearly
complete Uttaradhyayanasutra manuscript of the
mid 15 th century (Figure 1). This relatively early
example contains very fine illustrations. The Uttaradhyayanasutra
instructs Jain monks how to
behave and expounds certain Jain ideas, but also
contains many parables and explanatory stories.
The Kalpasutra, of which the V&A has one almost
complete copy and several pages from dispersed
manuscripts, all dating from the 15 th and 16 th
centuries, is the most commonly illustrated text
(Figure 2). It gives a history of the 24 Jain saviours
and later teachers as well as rules for monks
in the rainy season, when the text is recited
and worshipped at the Paryushan festival. Both
texts form part of the canon of the Svetambara
sect. Members of the laity commissioned copies
of manuscripts, which were given to temple
libraries and thus preserved. The donors gained
religious merit from this activity. By the late 15 th
century expensive colours such as gold and ultramarine
blue had become prevalent.
The Jain religion dates back at least 2,500 years
and is fundamentally concerned with liberation
of the soul from an endless cycle of birth, life,
death and rebirth by the elimination of karma.
All living beings are believed to have souls and
partly in order to avoid accumulating harmful
karma it is considered very important to avoid
causing them injury or hardship. Non-violence
to all beings is therefore the central and most
recognised principle of Jainism and accordingly
Jains are strictly vegetarian.
Digitization and Conservation
The decision to conserve and digitize these
manuscripts in 2010 was prompted by the proposal
to redisplay a selection of Jain works of
art in conjunction with the JAINpedia website
(http://beta.jainpedia.org/ ) project digitizing Jain
manuscripts in UK collections. The aim of this
initiative was to make these delicate artefacts
accessible for the public via the JAINpedia and
ICOM-CC Graphic Documents Working Group Interim Meeting | Vienna 17 – 19 April 2013
102