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Jaina Art and Architecture at Mathura
numerous forms and poses. 652 They are the finest specimens of the contemporary plastic art of Mathura, and have elicited great praise from connoisseurs of art. 653 Cunningham held that these female figures represent dancing girls.654 Cunningham's judgement was wrong, and it was ably refuted by scholars like Vogel and V.A. Smith.655 Some of these figures are shown naked.656 But in other figures the apparent nudity is merely an artistic convention.657 Vogel described these female figures as figures of yakṣinīs, like the somewhat similar figures of the railing of the Bharhut stūpa. 658 In fact, the females depicted on these railing pillars are salabhañjikās. 659 In the terminology of art, the term salabhañjikā originally denoted the woman plucking (and gathering) sala flowers by standing under a sala tree'.660 A graphic description of such females, who are depicted on the Jaina and Buddhist railings at Mathura, is embodied in the Jaina text entitled Rayapaseniya-Sutta 661 This and other Jaina sutras clearly state that the term salabhañjikā was used for beautiful female figures carved on the pillars of a stupa-railing.662
652.
JUPHS, III, pp. 53-67.
653. JAA, I, pp. 60-1; P.K. Agrawala, op. cit., pp. 5-6; V.S. Agrawala, Mathura Kalā, op. cit., p. 41.
ASIAR, III, p. 26.
ASIAR (1906-7), pp. 145-6; HOFA, p. 140.
HOFA, p. 140.
654.
655.
656.
657. Ibid.
658. ASIAR (1906-7), pp. 145-6; HOFA, p. 140.
659.
HOFA, pp. 140-1; JAA, I, p. 60; P.K. Agrawala, op. cit., p. 6; V.S. Agrawala, Mathura Kalā, op. cit., pp. 41-2.
P.K. Agrawala, op. cit., p. 6; V.S. Agrawala, Mathura Kală, pp. 41-2.
660.
661. Ibid.; ibid.
662.
Ibid., p. 11; ibid., pp. 41-2.
@急 卐
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