Jain Journal 1977 10

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

Page 17

Quetzalcoatl seated in padmasana and touching the ground. According to Donald A. Mackenzie the desciples of the god were like Buddhist missionaries or the Indian Brahmanas. They disapproved war and violence and 'instead of sacrificing animals made offerings of flowers, jewels, &c. to their deities'.
Trocadero Museum, Paris.
Stupa in Mexican Art
With its symbolic meaning and dimension stūpa as a shrine or memorial has the message of eternity in the Jaina and Buddhist faith especially in respect of the attainment of knowledge in its perfection. Besides the element of perspective of such monuments which ranges from the dawn of civilization and epochs when Vedic practices were valued for their symbolic purport the stupas establish a communion between the devotee and the Truth that transcends the universe. In the light of the Vedic tradition and the religious texts of the Jainas and the Buddhists the stūpas should have a direct perspective in the cult of the caityas. As discussed by U. P. Shah the caitya was originally associated with Vedic yajña and it continued in the age of the Mahabharata. He has shown that the Great Epic "refers to the region made sacred by hundreds of caitya-yupa-caitya and yupa (or caitya-yupa, sacrificial posts) were in one and the same place; but in another context the epic refers in glowing terms to the country full of caityas and yupas, where caityas are supposed to refer to places of sacred yajñas but may refer to shrines and stupas." (Studies in Jaina Art, p.45). In the Vedic literature, as it has been revealed, the word caitya refers to fire-alters (yajñasthāna). The same
P. C. DAS GUPTA