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THE FOURTEEN-FOLD PATH TO FREEDOM
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(according to the Digambaras, but the Svetambaras still claim to have 11 of them) - with the exception of part of the twelfth anga, which was found more than two thousand years later in South India near Mangalore, and on which the Digambara Jains in the recent centuries have found material matching later scriptures on which they based their reconstruction of all twelve angas. In front of most temples we can find a manastambha, a high slim stone pillar with on top a chaturdiki with its four carved Tīrthamkaras. Manastambha means “ego pillar,” because those who look up to it and see the lofty conquerors of all passions who have left all mundane affairs behind forget their egos (mana) and know that reality is beyond all attributes of the ego. Some temples have objects of brass or other metals with depictions of the twelve scriptures, which prove that this literature existed five centuries BC.
In the temple of India's great emperor Chandragupta Maurya, 87 on the “Chandra Mountain" at Śravana Belagola in Karnataka we find a statue of Parávanāth (the last-but-one Tīrthamkara, who lived about 800 BC; see photo 26) and of local deities (yakshas) dating back over 2000 years. The jali or openwork granite screen (photo 8) constructed as two fences, through the open spaces of which one can see the Parśvanātha statue in the room behind, show important episodes in the life of emperor Chandragupta Maurya. Photo 9 shows a detail.
The earliest stage of art
The finding of four Indus scriptural signs together with a standing Jina on the South Indian Vindhyagiri at Śravana Belagola has shed much light on the Indus script (photo 10). The standing Jina is only partly visible, but his posture is very clear. His head and shoulders have been damaged by the roof of a later temple. On the remains of the floors and the steps of the original temple, which is much older than the Harappa period, some important Indus signs are visible. All these art works represent the first art historical period of art in the
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