My very subjective impression, gained after ten seconds of intense scrutiny :-), is that this snakes and ladders painting is modern, perhaps late 20th century.  It's an indefinable impression based on the loose script, colours, and lax work on brush and pen strokes.  I may be wrong!  About the tilaka, I don't know.

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk*
Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
University of Alberta, Canada



On 10 August 2016 at 00:48, <jacob@fabularasa.dk> wrote:
Dear list,

I recently came upon a series of Indian snakes and ladders (gyān caupaṛ) charts in a private collection in Germany. I am puzzled by the fact that some of them appear to show Jaina tīrthaṅkaras painted with ūrdhvatilaka marks (which, to my knowledge, are not connected with Jainism).

The attached example is colophoned as being from "Bhāvāpurī Pālīthānā" (allegedly a Jaina dharamshala near Palitana, Gujarat) and apparently shows the tīrthaṅkara Neminātha with an ūrdhvatilaka mark on his forehead. To add to my confusion, the inscriptions on the chart clearly indicate a Vaiṣṇava orientation.

According to the buyer's source, the game used to be played by Brahmin pujaris working in or around Jaina temple grounds. While there is some possibility that the game chart is a fake produced solely for the antiques market, I would be very interested if anybody could enlighten me as to what might be going on here.

Kind regards,
Jacob

Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
PhD Fellow (Indology)
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
University of Copenhagen
Denmark
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