Jain Journal 1969 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 86

APRIL, 1969
191
1. Taksasila—According to tradition preserved in literature the earliest centre of Jainism in the Punjab was at Taksasila (Taxiles of the Greek writers) the remains of which have been identified with extensive ruins excavated near Saraikala (now named Taxila) twenty miles north of Rawalpindi. This centre is mentioned in the biography of Rsabha, the first Jina, who is generally regarded as a mythological person and is put millions of years back. It is stated there that when renouncing the world Rsabha divided his kingdom among his sons. Bharata, the eldest, got Ayodhya and Bahubali, the second, got Taksasila.
Now Bharata, on account of seniority, was entitled to proclaim himself as a cakravartin, demanding homage from his younger brothers. All except Bahubali readily yielded. The latter, however, would not do so. A battle ensued between the two, and at last the matter was referred to Rsabha who advised Bahubali to submit to Bharata's suzerainty. Dismayed at his defeat, Bahubali renounced the world and became an ascetic undertaking severe penance. A fiftyseven-feet-high statue representing him as such stands at Sravana Belgola in the Mysore State. It was fashioned from a single rock and was erected about a thousand years ago. When Bahubali was yet a king, his ascetic father Rsabha visited the kingdom of Bahubali who, on hearing this news prepared a fit reception for the great saint, but the latter returned without reaching his son's capital. As a memorial to the occasion Bahubali built a stūpa on the spot from which Rsabha had returned. The antiquity of this tradition is borne out by the sculptural remains of the Simhapura stūpa.
That Taksasila was a flourishing centre of Jainism till the time of its destruction is also warranted by literary references. One of them states that Taksasila was studed with 500 magnificent Jaina temples. Once upon a time a great epidemic spread there which began to take a big toll of human life because all gods and goddesses had fled from the city owing to the sacrilege committed by the mlecchas. However, the epidemic abated through Manadeva's efforts but in the third year of it the city was destroyed by the Turuskas about the sixth century A.D.
During the critical time the people concealed their idols in underground cells. The Jaina temple at Amritsar has got such a cell even to-day to store images if emergency arose.
Relying on this account Sir John Marshall came to believe that the temples F and G at Sir Kap, which he had previously regarded to be Buddhist, were most probably from among those very Jaina temples because their construction differed from those so far found at Taxila