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History of Jainism with Special Reference to Mathurā
– full of zest for life — who are busy in their favourite sports and pastimes. In fact, the female figures carved on these railing pillars should not be viewed only as documents of the plastic art of Mathurā; they are splendid specimens of plastic art, but they are also a mirror of the outlook, amusements, sports and pastimes of the women of that age.
In the terminology of art some of the women portrayed on these rails have been designated as sālabhañjikās,239 a term which originally denoted the motif – the woman plucking (and gathering) śāla flowers by standing under a blossoming śāla tree. 240 These railing pillars depict numerous shades of contemporary female life - a female standing under an asoka tree and gathering its flowers; a female playing with a ball; a female in dancing pose; a lady feeding a parrot; a female taking bath under a precipice; a woman drying her hair after bath; a female looking into a mirror; a woman arranging her hair by looking into a mirror; a lady playing on a harp; a female putting on her necklace; a woman unloosing her girdle, etc.241 These female figures present an admirable mixture of art and realism.
Some of the railing pillars with female figures, discovered at Kankāli Tīlā, appear to be a little earlier in period than the torana-śālabhañjikās of the stūpa at Sanchi, and are superior in modelling to the railing pillar female figures of the stūpa at Bharhut . 242
Jaina art of Mathurā: Miscellaneous figures of the Kuşāņa period
The gateway-pillars of the Kuşāņa period are extremely rich in carving. One of these pillars bears an inscription recording the gift of a torana by śrāvikā Balhastini.243 The two faces of these pillars are compartmented into a
239.P.K. Agrawala, op. cit., p. 6; JAA, I, p. 60. 240. Ibid., p. 6. 241. JUPHS, III, pp. 53 ff; P.K. Agrawala, op. cit., p. 9. 242. JAA, I, p. 60; V.S. Agrawala, Bhāratiya Kală, op.cit., p. 267. 243. SML no. J, 532; JAA, I, p. 61 and Plate 11. B.
