________________
192
INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
Saurashtra Hills of Girnar (West Gujarat), and many other places in India. They deliberately and purposely kept them secret from possible intruders and gave them no publicity outside Jain circles. On places which are often difficult to reach one can find well-preserved or damaged chaturdikis (small or large pillars with sculptured pictures of standing or sitting Jinas on four sides), yantras, manuscripts, paintings, copper works of art; and all this together provides us with detailed information about the art of the Jains. The author and photographer owes it exclusively to the Jains themselves who - because of his lifestyle and the genuine respect he has for them – revealed to him the things he has been able to see. In the temples there are sometimes manuscripts which provide information about the art of the Jains in the form of drawings.
As reported the Dwadas-anga (the 12 angas), scriptures existed until Mahāvīra's period, around 2600 years ago, but from then on they were lost or destroyed, and they were preserved only in the memories of holy men and monks who knew them by heart. But the scriptures themselves as well as the exact record of what was contained in them were lost, partly because of neglect, partly because of the rivalry of the Brahmins (who base themselves on the Vedas - the authority of which is denied by the Jains and Buddhists), the “lingites,” worshipper of the linga, the symbol of the Hindu god Śiva, and also the Buddhists. In Mahāvīra's days there were many local wars between small kingdoms, of which the Jains became victims after the loss of the Nanda dynasty. Jains ascribe the disappearance of their palm-leaf manuscripts to great fires which raged in the two great universities of those days: Nalanda (in Bihar, in the Northwestern part of India) and Taxla (now in Pakistan near Lahore). Nalanda later bloomed as a famous Buddhist university, and its sizeable ruins are now a tourist attraction. Some old temples have freestanding pillars (manastambhas.86) with depictions of the cosmos together with the Jain śruti-skandhas, the collection of above-mentioned 12 angas, complete with a description of the contents per volume. But the texts themselves have been lost
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
