Jain Parampara aur Yapaniya Sangh Part 01

SR No.: 004042
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ratanchand Jain
Publisher: Sarvoday Jain Vidyapith Agra
Publication Year: 2009
Total Pages: 844
Language: Hindi
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 15 MB

Page 635

अ०५ /विस्तृत सन्दर्भ
पुरातत्त्व में दिगम्बर-परम्परा के प्रमाण. / ४४१ "Oh Indra! no evil spirits have impelled us nor fiends, Oh Mighty God, with their devices. Let our true God subdue the hostile rabble. Let not the naked Gods (Śiśna Devās) approach our holy Yajña or worship.”
2. स वाजं यातापदुष्पदा यन्स्वर्षाता परि षदत्सनिष्यन्।
Hat Yaingia aet Histopadai 3119 aunt 4 11 X-99-3 "On most auspicious path he (Indra) goes to battle. He toiled to win heaven's light, full fain to gain it. He seized the hundred-gated castle's treasure by craft, unchecked, slaying in the affair) naked Gods (Siśna Devās)."
Macdonnell, in his VEDIC MYTHOLOGY, page 155, remarks that the worship of Siśna Devās was repugnant ot Rig Veda. Indra is besought not to let Siśna Devās approach Vedic sacrifices, Indra is said to have slain the Siśna Devās when he stealthily saw treasures hidden in a fort provided with 100 gates.
These two Riks flash before us the truth that we are perhaps recognizing in the Harappa statuette a fullfledged Jain Tīrthankara in the characteristic pose of physical abandon (Kāyotsarga) a pose which has been immortalised in the later day colossal statues of jaina Tīrthankaras and Siddhas such as at Sravanabelagola, Kārkal, Veņur etc. One may wonder if a later day Jaina iconographic plastic pose such as Kāyotsarga could have appeared as early as the Harappan or Mohenjo-Daro times (third millennium B.C.) Surely, the conceptions of absolute nudity and inner abandon of all physical consciousness for the realisation of the Jaina fundamental doctrine of Ahimsā can lead only to one pose. It is this pose that we find at Harappa in the statuette under description. There is thus a continuity and unity in this ideology and there are no other iconographic details in the statuette to confuse or lead us astray. Also the nude pose is in strict contrast to the Vedic description of their God Mahādeva > Rudra > Pasupati as UrdhvaMedhra the Pose in which we find him depicted on the steatite seal of Mohenjo-Daro (Cambridge History of India, 1953, plate XXIII).
The chronology and hierarchy of the series of 24 Jaina Tīrthankaras do not stand in the way of the date of the Harappa statuette. The present list of Tīrthankaras (Vartamāna Tīrthankaras) include 24, of whom we know that Mahāvīra was a contemporary of Buddha who flourished in the 6th century B.C. Pārsvanātha, the 23rd Tīrthankara, flourished more than 100 years before Mahāvīra and Neminātha, 22nd Tīrthankara, was a cousin of Lord Krsna, The friend of the Pāndavas of Mahābhārata fame. Even on a rough computation we get a date like the 9th century B.C.