Jain Journal 1984 04

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

Page 17

Jaina Art of Bengal
KALYAN KUMAR GANGULI
Of the many diversities that have added strength and vitality to the Indian culture the religion preached by Mahavira has been a significant one. Indians have been able to evolve many attitudes towards life and live their lives in many diverse philosophical ways. These ways have vied with each other in finding out the true essence of purity and Jainism has been one of these ways, making every endeavour to cut clear of all worldly attachments and achieve the end with singleminded devotion. Some five to six hundred years before Christ, India witnessed a large number of persons born in affluence, renouncing all worldly wealth and pleasures in order to find the way of radiance. Mahavira Vardhamana a prince born in a ksatriya family of Vaisali became one such sojourner for truth, the path laid down by whom had later been travelled by unending number of pilgrims striving to attain fulfilment. The lives of these great beings were like lamps which helped the ignition of many new ones and illuminated and glorified many others adding brightness and lusture to the diversely composed culture of this country. The whole of the country became a world experimenting in fraternal existence by persons following various religious beliefs and different ways of thinking and meditation.
Though vestiges of Jainism have become scarce in Bengal now and most of the families in Bengal professing Jainism are here for the last three hundred years, ancient Jaina literature is in evidence that the teachings of the Jinas were not altogether unknown in this part of India in the remote past. Ayārānga Sutta, one of the earliest sources of Jaina tradition holds that Mahavira travelled widely in the pathless countries of the Ladha (Radha, West Bengal) through Vajjabhumi and Subbhabhumi, before he attained kevala knowledge.1 A tradition recorded in the Kathakoşa written in the 9th century A.D., states that the well known Jaina saint Bhadrabahu, reputed as the spiritual guide of the Maurya emperor Candragupta, the grandfather of Asoka was born at Devikot in northern Bengal, also known as Kotivarsa, identified with modern Bangarh in West Dinajpur district. A sect among Jainas in eastern India was known after Godasa, a disciple of Bhadrabahu as Godasa-gaṇa accor
1 See present writer's 'Jaina Images in Bengal' in Indian Culture, Vol. VI, 1939.