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settlement, the temples and Tirthankaras will still reveal an ascent of art in communicating the changeless sublimity of devotion to the Emancipated. In fact, the graceful austerity of the Tirthankaras standing in kāyotsarga pose will offer a meaning in determination of the Self remaining remote in the world of meditation and supreme knowledge. Thus, as it will be felt, the sculptors concerned with the Jaina art at Pakbirra and at their comparable sites and monuments in India had to carve out figures conveying profound perception along with other divinities, either graceful images of gods, or female devatās enticingly beautiful for their sensitive lines and warmth of modulation. In this perspective the Jaina art at Pakbirra has a significance of its own
lying at a cross-roads of migration of style from Varendra, Khiching and more western areas. Often carved of chlorite the images of Pakbirra reveal a confident skill of sculptors to envisage an elegant grace of devatās following a vocabulary of style that may recall in its appeal some of the beautiful delineations in the Indian art in general as representing the post-Gupta tradition.
Ambika, Sasanadevi of Tirthankara Neminatha 9th-10th century A.D.
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