Gommateshvara Commemoration Volume

SR No.: 012066
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Parshwanath Shodhpith Varanasi
Publication Year: 1981
Total Pages: 198
Language: English, Hindi
Classification: Smruti_Granth & Articles
File Size: 8 MB

Page 54

The Colossal Statue of Gommateśvara and its Significance
throughout the world, with power of Clairaudience enabling him to hear far off things, for reading, receiving and transmitting his thoughts to other receptive minds. One feels as if his mind and thoughts are being read by the statue correctly by the faculty of Telepathy-- science of action and reaction of two minds through emotional influence without communicating through senses. Therefore, blessed are they, that can forget their daily drudgery of hum drum life for a while and see the spiritual personality of Bahubali through his sublime statue and return home purified and holified at least to some extent. Bahubali Statue is all things to all men :
This sublime statue is practically a miracle of majesty and beauty, the supreme idea of the Supreme Man. It presents different views to different persons at their own respective levels of understanding. To a common man with a prosaic mind, it, may present merely a view of an artistically symmetrical symbol of a great noble soul evoking admiration and respect in his mind. To a poet, gifted with a poetic genius, the statue presents an entirely different view, which can quicken his imaginative power by inspiring him to sing in praise of Bahubali's universal message of sympathy and pity for the ignorant and teaching the sclfish world by his own example of self-denial and renunciation in order to attain the highest aim of life. Sages and saints can derive inspiration from the statue steadily to tread the spiritual path lcading to eternal Bliss. A philosopher, on the other hand, with his speculative mind, will benefit by adjusting or correcting his own philosophic doctrines to be in harmony with the Ultimate Reality- a lesson issuing from this holy statue. Even a cruel man's hard heart will melt by the sight of the statue by its silent message of compassion for all that lives. In short, the Statue serves as a perennial source of inspiration both to the animate and inanimate Things by preaching without words, peace and compassion for co-existence. As Shakespeare puts it in his comedy called As you Like It, while describing Nature's blessings in disguise available in a pastoral life away from the madding crowd of ignoble strife by observing that there are sermons in stones and tongues in the trees in forest and the running brooks are the books of Nature teaching lessons of charity and self-sacrifice to forest-dwellers.
Relevant Mythological Account of Lord Bāhubali : Birth and Boyhood in royal family :
In the galaxy of twenty four Jaina Prophets of the present cycle of time known as Tirthankars, Emperor Bhagvān Adinātha ranks first and Mahāvira ranks last. From 814 to 877 A. D. Nrpatunga as the head of Rāştrakūta Dynasty, was the ruler and his religious preceptors Jinasenācārya and Guņabhadrācārya wrote respectively Pūrva Purā ņa and Uttara Pura na which served as guide and basis for the later Kannada poets like Pampa for their works in old Kannada. Jinasenācārya, the ancient Jaina Saint Scholar wrote a part- Pūrva