Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 65

APRIL, 1974
From a somewhat later period, as the characters show, from the first century B.C. comes a dedicatory inscription which has been found far to the west of the original home of the Jainas, in Mathura on the Jumna. It tells of the erection of a small temple in honour of the Arhat Vardhamana, also of the dedication of seats for the teachers, a cistern and a stone table. The little temple, it says stood beside the temple of the guild of tradesmen and this remark proves, that Mathura, which, according to the tradition of the Jainas, was one of the chief seats of their religion, possessed a community of Jainas even before the time of this inscription. 36
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A large number of dedicatory inscriptions have come to light, which are dated from the year 5 to 98 of the era of the Indo-Scythian kings, Kaniska, Huviska, and Vasudeva (Bazodeo) and therefore belong at latest to the end of the first and to the second century A.D. They are all on the pedestals of statues, which are recognisable partly by the special mention of the names of Vardhamana and the Arhat Mahavira, partly by absolute nudity and other marks. They show, that the Jaina community continued to flourish in Mathura and give besides extraordinarily important information, as I found in a renewed research into the ancient history of the sect. In a number of them, the dedicators of the statues give not only their own names, but also those of the religious teachers to whose communities they belonged. Further, they give these teachers their official titles, still used among the Jainas: vācaka, 'teacher', and ganin, 'head of a school'. Lastly they specify the names of the schools to which the teachers belonged, and those of their subdivisions. The shools are called gaṇa, 'companies'; the subdivisions, kula ‘families',
have thoroughly discussed his excellent article in the Oesterreichischen Monatsschrift, Bd. X, S. 231 ff. and have there given my reasons for differing from him on an important point, namely, the date of the beginning of the Maurya Era, which according to his view begins with the conquest of Kalinga by Asoka about 155 B. C. Even yet I find it impossible to accept that the expression, "in the hundred and sixty-fifth year of the Maurya Kings can mean anything else then that 164 years have passed between the thirteenth year of the rule of Kharavela and the anointing of the first Maurya king Chandragupta. Unfortunately it is impossible to fix the year of the latter occurence, or to say more than that it took place between the years 322 and 312 B. C. The date given in Kharavela's inscription cannot therefore be more closely fixed than that it lies between 159 and 147 B.C. I now add to my former remarks that appeals to the Arhat and Siddha appear also in Jaina inscriptions from Mathura and may be taken as a certain mark of the sect. Thus it is worthy of note that even in Hiuen Tsiang's time, (Beal, Si-yu-ki, Vol. II, p. 205) Kalinga was one of the chief seats of the Jainas.
36 This inscription also was first made known by Dr. Bhagwanlal Indraji, loc. cit., p. 143.