________________ JAINISM IN NORTH INDIA on her lap. The left hand supports the dish, but the right is raised up to the shoulder. Both females appear to be naked. The other two figures are those of Nagamesha, and rightly are they "goat-headed," according to Dr Buhler, as also the figure in the other sculpture Comparing this slab 1 with that of the four figures of Cunningham ? the eminent Onentalist observes. "The very close resemblance of the position of the infant, and the attitude of the female holding it, is at once apparent. And this point, taken together with the unmistakable figure of Naigamesha-Nemeso, Irresistibly leads to the conclusion that the legend referred to must be the same in both cases " 3 In fact the cave temples and dwellings excavated in Orissa and at Junagadh or Girnar in Gujarat, with their elaborately carved friezes and finished to the minutest detail and ornament, and the richly decorated Ayagapatas and Toranas of the Mathura find, stand before us not as remains but as living oracles of art. They combine in them the Triune Entity of Indian art-a sublime union of the purely Decorative, the Realistic and the purely Spiritual. This is felt rather than seen; for the differences between the one and the other are to be found, not in the fields of artistic knowledge, however wide, but in the terra incognita of Taste. 1 Buhler, op cit, Plate II, & Cunningham, ASI, xx, Plate IV. * Buhler, op cit, p 818 260
