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APRIL, 1986
and some of the fragments may indicate exterior decoration."1" As no significant inscription has been found affixed to the temple, the chronology of the temples cannot be satisfactorily established. Only one inscription in a slab of stone, now lying apart, has been found with a text of some length. Its alignment or relationship with the temples could not be known now even from the text inscribed on it. Besides, the information it renders is not also helpful for the chronology of the temples. Neither does it give any date or regnal year. It simply records the erection of pillar on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Jina by one Sruta Sivadripāda at Badrikāthāna near the tank of Bāulījam village. But the inscription, for the more correct rendering and palaeographic dating, is still at the disposal of the experts. The tentative palaeographic dating, so far, gives a date of around 14th century A.D.18
As regards the temples, particularly those that are standing now, a few scholars1 have already taken note of their architectural features. They have also assessed the probable dating of the surviving temples in relation to other temple complexes at Telkupi, Barakar, and other stone temples of the mediaeval period in the West Bengal. They have further traced a relationship of the style with that of Khiching in Mayurbhanj, Orissa. Dr. Debala Mitra in her monograph of the temples at Telkupi,20
133
17 David Mc Cutchion, op. cit., p. 39.
18 The stone slab containing the inscription was found at the kutcha school room mentioned as grouping (d) in the text infra. The tentative reading of the inscription is as follows:
pa (ba) drikā thāna jayati thimbe bāuli jām
hrida śruta (śreņi) si vädripāda jina śrī janmotsa
va natasya
The authors are indebted to Sri Bhanwarlal Nahata and to Sri Ganesh Lalwani for reading of this inscription. Sri Nahata suggests that the inscription is around 400/500 years old.
For an inscription found at the pedestal of a Jina image from Pakbirra now preserved at the State Archaeological Museum, West Bengal, Calcutta, See Sudhin De, "Two Unique Inscribed Jaina Sculptures", Jain Journal, Vol. V, No. 1, Calcutta, July, 1970, pp. 24-26.
19 See, among others, David Mc Cutchion, op. cit., pp. 38-39 (for the temples of Pakbirra), pp. 33-43 (for a study of the temples of Purulia District); Debala Mitra, "Telkupi-a Submerged Temple Site in West Bengal", Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, No. 76, Delhi, 1969, p. 56, pl. XXVIII B (for the temples of Pakbirra), pp. 51-59 (for a general observation on the architecture of the region vis-a-vis the temples of Telkupi). 20 Ibid., pp. 51-59.
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