Jain Journal 1979 10

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

Page 26

OCTOBER, 1979
In the Acaranga-sutra it is said that when the Jina Mahavira turned an ascetic:
"Mahavira then plucked out with his right and left (hands) on the right and left (sides of his head) his hair in five handfuls. But Sakra, the leader and king of the gods, falling down before the feet of the Venerable ascetic Mahavira, caught up the hair in a cup of diamond, and requesting his permission, brought them to the milk ocean.' "13
63
In the Kalpasūtra it is said that Mahavira as well as his twenty-three predecessors did the same-plucked hair in five handfuls and turned shaven-headed monks. Only the image of one of the Jinas, Rsabha, the first in the series, is shown as wearing matted locks like the Brahman Jatila monks carved on the Sunga monuments. The images of the other twenty-three Jinas mostly show heads with bump covered by hair arranged in ringlets becoming the Mahapurușa. But images of the Jinas with shavenhead are not unknown. Coomaraswamy has published a seated image of the Jina Parsva with smooth head from Mathura14 where the different types of the images of the Jinas were carved for the first time.
Reprinted from Indian Historical Quarterly, March, 1931.
13 Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXII, p.199. 14 Coomaraswamy, The Origin of the Buddha Image, fig.43.