Jain Journal 1994 07

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

Page 19

OHIRA: THE 24 BUDDHAS AND THE 24 TIRTHANKARAS
the other tirthankara images on the Ayaga-pata, and the unidentified images must be Mahāvīra's ones. Pārsva's biography offered in the Kalpasūtra does not attract us as an individual human being, because his personality as an individual person fell into oblivion already in the remote past as so suggested by the fact that he is associated with the popular snake worship.32
15
Excluding Mahavira and Parsva, the tirthankaras who are the popular objects of idol worship and who are paid due attention in the canonical texts are Rsabha and Aristanemi. Rṣabha or Adinatha appears in Jambudvipaprajñapti II, and his son Bharata in its Chapter III. Aristanemi appears in the canon as the preceptor of Krsna. Here we should note the fact that Rsabha-Bharata and AristanemiKrsna are both involved with the Vaisnavas.
Historically speaking, the Jainas seem to have advanced the roads opened by the Buddhists, and they became active centering around the then cosmopolitan city, Mathura, since around the 2nd century B.C. And in the Kuṣāna period, during the reigns of King Kaniska and King Vasudeva, the Jainas seem to have enjoyed more power and prosperity at Mathura than the Buddhists did, as evinced by the numerous finds unearthed therein.33 Upon entering the Gupta age, however, the number of the Jaina inscriptions and archaeological remains suddenly decreases, and the number of those in South India centering around Mysore increases. There are hardly any Jaina remains in South India since the beginning of this Christian era (there are, of course, in the pre-Christian era),34 but they begin to appear all of a sudden upon entering the Gupta age, and their number continues to grow in due course. And since then. South India and West India have become the two centers of the Jainas.
32. Pārsva was worshipped elsewhere in India in the post-canonical age, as Prof. Bruhn notices in f.n.29. It is true even today. According to Pt. Malvania, people worship him for the power of his Yaksa and Yakṣini for answering prayers. 33. Out of 159 Mathura inscriptions of this period listed in Lüders' List of Brahmī Inscriptions, 87 belong to the Jainas, 55 to the Buddhists and 17 to non-sectarian, from which it is assumed that the Jainas then had more dominant power than the Buddhists. See Gai, G.S.: "Mathura Jaina Inscriptions of the Kuṣaṇa Period" in Aspects of Jaina Art and Architecture.
34. S. Ohira: A Study of the Tattvārthasūtra with Bhāṣya, pp.116-17