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72
RISABHA DEVA
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have been no occasion for Jainas to be worried over the matter. Important evidence, recently unearthed by the Archaeological Department of India, abundantly shows the prevalence of Jainism long long before the age which the modern investigators have assigned to the oldest of the Vedas. A number of Statuettes have been recovered at Mohenjo-daro which are characterised by half-shut eyes, the gaze being fixed on the tip of the nose. These statuettes clearly indicate that. the people of the Indus Valley in the Chaloolithic period not only practised yoga but worshipped the images of the yogis." The Memoir of the Archaeological Survey of India).* This takes us several thousands of years beyond the date of the Statue of the first Tirthamkara. which was carried off by Nanda Vardhana in the fifth century B.C. These human Statuettes must be Jaina relics, as they are outside the Vedic Pantheon and Cult. But all this merely confirms what an astute and recondite scholar, Major J.G.R. Forlong, said years ago (see Short Studies in the Science of Comparative Religion," pages 243-244) :—
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"All Upper, Western, North Central India was
*See the "Survival of the Pre-historic Civilization of the Indus Valley," and the Pioneer, dated November 10th, 1929.