Page Text
________________
No. IV 1
NEW STUDIES IN SOUTH INDIAN JAINISM,
149
Belgola culture seems to have made its own distinguished and distinctive contribution to medieval Indian Art and Architecture, the results of the memorialistic activities and devotions of the pilgrims that made it their Thirtha not only during life, but even more so, at its close.
Lewis Rice, who first edited the Epigraphs and brought to light the Antiquities of Śravana Belgola, in the Epigraphia Karnatica thus describes the present appearance of this great Thirtha :—
"The eye of the traveller who is passing along the trunk road leading from Bangalore to the Western Coast, through the Manjarabad Ghat, is arrested on approaching Channarayapatna by a conspicuous hill few miles to the South, bearing on its summit what appears at first a column, but which, on drawing nearer, proves to be a colosal statue in the human form. This striking and unusual object, which is visible for miles around, marks the site of one of the most interesting spots in the South of India, and one whose epigraphic records carry us back to the very earliest authentic period of Indian history, anterior in fact even to the famous edicts of Asoka, the oldest inscriptions in the country. This noted place is moreover the chief seat of a religious sect at one time fore most in power and influence, whose origin is of higher antiquity than that of Buddhism."
"1
The earliest inscription on this hill takes the mind of the student to events long anterior to Asoka,-to the happenings in Nothern India, in the time of Asoka's ancestor Chandragupta, the founder of the Maurya Dynasty. This inscription is ascribed rightly, to king Bhaskara, the immediate grandson of the Great Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, who is also said to have adorned it with Chityalayas or temples of worship, as it enshrined the sepulcheres of his own grandfather and that father's guru Bhadrabahu. the last of Jaina Srita Kavalis. As the event that led to this most ancient inscription on this hill is of greater antiquity than the inscription itself and bears witness to some aspects of the religious history of Nothern India before the time of Asoka, it is worth recapitulation. It is also interesting that that event was described in this epigraph
1. I. S. B. No. 1.
| SR No. | 010062 |
| Book Title | Jain Siddhant Bhaskar |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Hiralal Jain, Others |
| Publisher | ZZZ Unknown |
| Publication Year | 1940 |
| Total Pages | 143 |
| Language | Hindi |
| Classification | Book_Devnagari |
| File Size | 7 MB |