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JAIN JOURNAL
Vol. XL
No. 4 April
2006
STUDIES IN JAINA ICONOGRAPHY
A.K. Bhattacharyya
Chapter - 1 Introduction
In introducing the following pages as a work of investigation into the much neglected subject of Jain Iconography, I have to note here some of the features that are peculiar to this branch of study and the line of approach to the intricate problems as followed here. The subject of Jain Iconography, as any other allied subject, draws for its textual material from mainly two kinds of works. The first kind dealing exclusively with installation ceremonies (Pratisthā) giving the dhyānaslokas for the deities, and others having casual references to the iconographic details of the deities. The first kind is generally written in Sanskrit being of considerably late period while the second one available both in Prākṣit and Sanskrit, date from the earliest periods of Jain literature, beginning from the Angas. Besides these, there are numerous works on the mythological stories and legends of the Jains, Svetāmbara and Digambara, explaining many of the subsidiary scenes in Jain images and explaining most of the otherwise, inexplicable terms and phrases relating to the subject. The Jain inscriptions dating from the 3rd or the 2nd century B.C., right up to the 12th or the 13th centuries contain references to the existence of Jain images proving the antiquity of the art, as also help to explain in a number of cases iconographic terminology not discussed elsewhere.
Our endeavour has been to show the correlation between the textual descriptions on the one hand and the extant archaeological finds from all over India on the other. The correspondence and the variation both have been noted in the case of each and every deity studied in the present thesis. In this study an attempt has been made in
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