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अनुसन्धान ५० (२)
a dome under which stand in a row the 72 whitewashed statuettes of the Jakhs on their little horses, freshly painted, with their characteristic orange turban, their moustache, with the manuscript scrolls under the arm; their sister Sayari is different only through her smaller size. A series of 72 statuettes has been discarded, but not destroyed because when a series is replaced, the preceding one is simply put aside and continues to receive garlands and some honours. An oil lamp is continuously lighted and hung on a pillar of the entry. Darsana is permanent, visitors are numerous.9
Local writers as well as English scholars have tried hard to find a plausible explanation for the origin of the strange benefactors from foreign lands. Many theories were put forward, some of them quite fanciful: they were said to be celestial beings as indicated by their name, Hindu or Buddhist yakṣa, Greeks or Romans, Sākas or White Huns1o, or even the Varangian (Scandinavian) Guards of the emperor of Byzantium! More prosaically, Rushbrook Williams proposes an Iranian identity : they might have been Zoroastrians fleeing islamization from Northern Iran (as had the present day Parsis who reached the coast of Gujarat as early as during the 9th century) a group of whom might have been shipwrecked and sought refuge on the coast of Kutch. Their peaceful ways and their knowledge would be in accordance with those attributed to the Jakhs. For Dalpat Shrimali11, a specialist of the religious folklore of the untouchables in Saurashtra and Gujarat, the god Jakh might be an avatara of Matang or Mataim Dev, one of the great Gurus of the Mahāmārgi mythology, born from a brahmin father and an untouchable mother, famous for his astrologic science but who is also one of the great Hindu preachers of Nizari Ismailism12. None of these theories can be proven, and the legend of the Jakhs does not seem to have crossed the Ranns of Kutch.
Jain Education International 2010_03
LES MONTEZES
F.30170, MONOBLET, FRANCE
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