Jain Journal 2000 04

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

Page 45

NEWS ON JAINISM AROUND THE WORLD
201
Below Akbar's Fatehpur Sikri lies an ancient Jain City
It was a jungle on December 7, 1999. That was a day before the surveyor from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) identified the mound near the fort of Fatehpur Sikri and ordered the felling of trees.
And within a fortnight, the ASI team laid open the superstructure of an 11th century Jain temple, just half a km away from Mughal Emperor Akbar's famous fort complex.
"There was habitation and it was destroyed. The divine images were broken and scattered helter-skelter by the latter-day invaders,” is how ASI Director General Ajay Shankar briefly put it.
While digging out the trenches at the site, the ASI team came upon one of the richest archaeological caches found since the glorious days of Sir John Marshall.
"Dumped one upon the other, it seemed the sculptures were just waiting for us to bring them out into the open," said 26-year-old archaeologist from Orissa, Arakhita Pradhan. In fact, the Indian Express team which visited the site saw scultprues of Jain Tirthankaras and carved red-stone potteries, still half-buried between the layers of earth.
Not one or two. But at least 34 exquisite sculptures, of various sizes-small, medium and one big-have already been retrieved by the ASI team from a 250-sq yard plot at Bir Chha-bili-ka-Tilla in Sikri village. And these findings have pushed back the antiquity of Fatehpur Sikri to 2nd Century AD.
"We've found branded redstone potteries, ornamented with mica dust, from the Gupta period. And the most remarkable thing about these sculptures is that they have inscriptions on them making their dates indisputable,” said RK Dikshit, assistant conservator, in charge of the Fatehpur Sikri.
Most breathtaking of the entire lot was, of course, the six-foothigh partly broken, tribhanga Saraswati from the Jain pantheon. Of a rare beauty, it was found in a face-down position.
"It was dug out on January 20. It's changed the entire worth of the site," said Dharamvir Sharma, ASI's superintending archaeologist who is responsible for initiating the excavation.
The excavation, according to Sharma, shows that Fatehpur Sikri was a pre-Mughal city with temples around its periphery. "But we are