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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