Indian Antiquary Vol 56

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 92

74
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[APRIL, 1927
with two figures standing on smaller pedestals and waving the whisks round the deity. It is possible that the figures may represent Shâlibhadra and his pupil Pûrnabhadra.3
Ajitanâtha is the second Tirthamkara, born like Rishabhadeva, the first Tirthamkara, and most of his successors in the royal house of Ikshvâku, to which the hero of the Ramayana also belongs. According to Hemachandra Sûri, the greatest of the medieval Jain scholars, Ajitanâtha was the son of Jitashatru and Vijayâdevi and was born at Ajodhya on 8th day of the bright half of the month of Magha. It appears to have been a tradition of Jaina theology that Ajitanâtha was a contemporary and a cousin of the mythical prince Sagara, just as Rishabhadeva is said to have been a contemporary of the sovereign Bharata. It is absolutely impossible to find out what kernel of truth such traditions possess, for they have been overlaid with an impossible amount of myth, legend and fairy tale. Hemachandra devotes a lengthy chapter of some 150 printed pages to the description of the life of the second Tirthamkara, which has little of interest, notwithstanding the enormous mass of verbiage and hyperbole. Jaina theology has not even the merit of originality or of imagination, for it usually borrows wholesale from the Hindu Purdnas and re-edits the material somewhat clumsily, changing of course the emphasis from the Brahmanical deities to the gods of its own pantheon.4
It would appear that the art of casting metallic images reached a high standard of sesthetic merit in medieval Gujarat, the traditions of which were somewhat different from those of the South-Indian artists. A very large number of good specimens representative of the mediaval school of Gujarat can still be seen, principally in the Jaina temples scattered throughout the length and breadth of Gujarat and Rajputana (the major portion of which formed a part of the old kingdom of Pâtan). The subject however needs to be systematically studied and surveyed in detail. It would seem that, unlike the development of graphic art, the course of Indian sculpture in Northern India continued to be even and produced works of great merit for many centuries after the death of Harshavardhana; and the plastic art of medieval India has nothing to lose by comparison with the great epoch of the Guptas..
FOLK-SONGS OF THE TULUVAS. BY B. A. SALETORE, B.A., L.T., M.R.A.S. (Continued from p. 17.)
The following song is sung by the Mundâla Holeyas of Udipi Taluk when they bury their dead:
5. Text.
Le le le le le le lâ kode le le le, Le le le le le le lâ kode le le le, Aithumukhariye, le le le le le, Nala mara danna mudetta Aithumukharige, Mallavonji mudetta Aithumukhariye; Kela malla kattondenâ Aithumukhariye, Uruvada grâmodu, Aithumukhariye. Andabanda maltonde, Aithumukhariye. Jâtipolikeda, Aithumukhariye, Nitimaltondena, Aithumukhariye. Kankanâdi nileḍada, Aithumukhariye, Kotaradanna mudetta, Aithumukharige, Poņņu malla tûvondenâ, Aithumukhariye.
Radda kare sangâterena kûdovonde, Aithumukhari,
I am indebted to Mr. K. P. Modi of Ahmadabad for getting the image adequately photographed. 4 The details about Ajitanatha have been taken from.the dreary Mahákávya-Tri-Shashti-ShalákáPurusha Charitram, by Hemachandra Sûri, canto 2, Gujarati translation, published by Jaina. Dharma Pracharak Sabha, Bhavnagar.