Jain Journal 1969 04

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

Page 88

APRIL, 1969
bodies with ashes and wore strings of human skulls. Samuel Beal in his note on 'naked ascetics' identified them with the nirgranthas or the Jaina ascetics of the Digambara sect. This may be so. But those who besmeared their bodies with ashes and wore strings of human skulls were certainly not nirgranthas. They were apparently kāpālikas or belonged to some other faith.
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From Kapisa Hiuen Tsiang came to Simhapura where he found near Asoka's stupa, the place at which the first prophet of the whiteclothed heretics attained enlightenment and delivered his maiden sermon. An inscription, also, was placed nearby to record this fact. There was a temple too. The religious rules of the people visiting it were very similar to those of the Buddhists. They either lived quite naked or put on white clothes. The image of their founder had an affinity with that of the Buddha. Evidently the above statement refers to the Digambara and Svetambara Jainas and supports the tradition of Rsabha's visit to the place over which Bahubali erected a stupa.
From the data furnished by Hiuen Tsiang Sir Alexander Cunningham calculated the site of Simhapura to be somewhere near the modern Katas (Kataksa), a place of Hindu pilgrimage in the Jhelum district. At the suggestion of Dr. C. Buhler, Dr. (later Sir) Aurel Stein, then the Principal of the Oriental College, Lahore, personally visited the place in 1889 and discovered the remains of the Simhapura Jaina temple buried near Murti, a village two miles from Katas. He at once commenced excavation and collected a huge mass of idols and other remains of the temple. All these were brought to Lahore in twentysix camel loads and were deposited in the Punjab Central Museum where some are exhibited in the sculpture gallery while the rest lie stored in the godown. The size of the temple and Hiuen Tsiang's remarks about it clea ly show that the Jainas must have occupied an important place in the population of Simhapura when the Chinese traveller visited it.
4. Parvatika (6th century A.D.)-Pradyotana Suri in the introduction to his Kuvalayamālākatha (finished in Saka 700-Vik. sam. 835) states that in the Uttarapatha (Northern India) there was a town named Pavvaiya (Parvatika) on the bank of the river Candrabhaga (Chenab). The king of this place was Toraraya who is perhaps the same as Toramana, the well-known Huna prince. According to other accounts Toramana's capital was Sakala which has been variously identified with Sialkote and Sangla hill. It is probable that Parvatika was another name of Sakala and was situated close to the modern Pabbu hills, and hence the city was called Parvatika, or the city itself gave the name to the hills, for Pabbi is only the modern form of Parva ika.