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Jainism in Mathura
escaped destruction. The Jaina donative inscription dated vs 1080, i.e., AD 1023, and the colossal image of tirthamkara Padmaprabhanatha dated vs 1134, i.e., AD 1077, prove that the two Jaina temples at Kankälä Tīlā, Mathurā - one built in the second century BC and the other about the beginning of the Christian era escaped destruction at the time of Mahmud of Ghazni's invasion of this city in AD 1018, and were centres of Jaina worship during the greater part of the eleventh century AD.430
Neither literature nor archaeology holds the clue to the subsequent fate of these Jaina temples. Either time took toll of them or 'they suffered destruction at some later date'. 431 These temples stood in the vicinity of the Jaina stupa at Kankali Ţilā. The Jaina stupa, if it stood intact at the time of Mahmud of Ghazni's invasion of Mathura in AD 1018, too, would have escaped destruction. The expression mathurästūpastutaya used in Jinaprabha Suri's VividhaTirtha-Kalpa, composed between AD 1307 and AD 1340, seems to convey the impression that the stūpa at Kankali Tīlā was in existence as late as the first half of the fourteenth century AD.432 Mathura was in a state of ruin for many centuries after Mahmud of Ghazni's invasion. It appears doubtful that this stūpa managed to exist as late as the fourteenth century AD. We shall turn to this in the last chapter of the book.
430. JS, Introduction, pp. 3-4; Yasastilaka, p. 433; EI, II, p. 211 fn 35.
431.
Ibid., pp. 3-4; Ibid., p. 433.
432. MCH, pp. 210-11.
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