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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
316
OLD BRAHMÍ INSCRIPTIONS
The differences in style and workmanship may as well be accounted for by the differences in the tradition, training and skill of the artists or craftsmen employed. To prove that the caves with superior style and technique of art in their reliefs were chronologically posterior to those without reliefs, as well as to those with inferior style and technique of art in their reliefs, it is necessary, first of all, to establish that any of the caves now found with highly ornamented reliefs was not counted among the 118 caves excavated in the thirteenth and fourteenth years of Khāravela's reign.
We have no evidence, as yet, to prove that. The inscriptions in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves standing next iu point of chronology to the old Brābmi inscriptions are a few Sanskrit inscriptions, including one incised by King Udyota-Kesari in the 7th century A.D. or even at a later period. King Udyota-Kesari's inscription, as we have seen, records the installation of the images of 24 Tirthařkaras in three of the caves on the Khandagiri bill which are known as Navamuni, Durgā and Hanumān, and the re-excavation of an old tank. None of these medieval inscriptions alludes to the excavation of a new cave. On the other hand, the installation of the images of 24 Tirtharkaras by King Udyota-Keśari and that of the images of nine sages, Durgā and Hanuman by the Hindus thereafter indicate a process of successive superaddition of stone-figures.
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