Jain Rup Mandan

Author(s): Umakant P Shah
Publisher: Abhinav Publications

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Preface
Rama Prasad Chanda made valuable advancement in the study of Jaina art and iconography by publishing 'Notes on Jaina Remains at Rajgir, ASI, A.R., 1925-26, describing and illustrating almost all important Jaina sculptures from this ancient site. He supplemented these notes in the same report with another long article on 'Svetāmbara and Digambara images of the Jainas' wherein he discussed the age of differentiation of Svetambara and Digambara Jaina images and placed it roughly in the age of king Ama (Nāgāvaloka) and Bappabhațți sűri, in c. 750-840 A.D. In his Mediaeval Indian Sculptures in the British Museum (1936), he brought to light some beautiful Jaina sculptures.
T.N. Ramachandran was the first scholar to give a systematic account of Jaina iconography in his "Tiruparuttikunram and its Temples' (1934). The book included study of wall-paintings in Jaina temples at Jina-Kanchi, supplemented by illustrations of Jaina bronzes and sculptures in these temples, an account of Jaina Cosmography and Iconography of yakşas and yakşiņis from Hemacandra's work and three lato Kannada sources.
Publications on Jaina miniature paintings by W. Norman Brown, Coomaraswamy, Sarabhai Nawab, Moti Chandra and others were also helpful.
Dr. Benoytosh Bhattacharya gave, for the first time, an outline of tv supe u. a work on Jaina Iconography by giving lists of different types of Jaina deities for whom sādhanas were traced by him in Jaina texts. The paper on Jaina Iconography was published in Sri Atmānanda Satabdi Smāraka Grantha (1935).
Brindavan C. Bhattacharya had published a study of the 'Goddess of Learning in Jainism in Malaviya Commemoration Volume (1932) with the help of sources like Nirvāņakalikä and AcaraDinakara. In 1939, he published a work on Jaina Iconography, which was the first work of its kind aiming at presenting iconography of various Jaina deities with the help of literary as well as archaeological sources. Unfortunately it is marred by some cases of incorrect interpretations of the text, incomplete references, vague statements and in a few cases wrong identifications. However he deserves all the credit for publishing a pioneer work on Jaina iconography.
Sapkalia, H.D., in 1938, identified some Dhank sculptures as Jaina which were formerly supposed to have been Buddhist. In 1940, he published a paper on Jaina Yakşas and Yaksinis and published two sculptures of Dharanendra and Padmavati from the Prince of Wales Museum, along with a few reliefs from the Jaina cave at Badami. His paper on Temples at Deogarh hardly added anything new to what was published in the Archaeological Reports and what was already mentioned by B.C. Bhattacharya.
Vasudev Saran Agrawala's Catalogue of Mathura Museum (volume on Jaina sculptures) has been very useful to all students of Jaina art and culture. He wrote several articles on Jaina sculptures, for example, an article on Presiding Deity of Child Birth in Mathura art, and Brahmanical Deities in the Jaina Art at Mathura, etc.
K.P. Jayaswal's discoevry of 'Torso of a Jaina Image of Mauryan Period' from Lohanipur near Patna, published in JBBORS, vol. XXIII, was an epoch-making discovery in the study of Indian iconography of historical period.
J.E. Van Lohuizen-De Leeuw published her famous work on the Scythian Period (1949) in which she discussed several Jaina images of the Kuşāna period from Mathura and focused our attention on the importance of dating Mathura sculptures of c. Ist cent. B.C. to c. 4th cent. A.D. It may be pointed out here that all Mathura inscriptions-Jaina, Hindu and Buddhist-deserve to be read again.
This is not an exhaustive list of all work done before I wrote my thesis and published articles on Ambikā, Sarasvati etc.; this is but a brief survey of the work done. Since 1949 till today many authors have made substantial contributions in the field of Jaina art and culture. In this new revised edition of my thesis I have tried to incorporate results of all such researches by various scholars. However here too I crave indulgence of scholars for all acts of omissions.
In my researches for many years I had concentrated only on North Indian Jaina images and my thesis was entitled 'Elements of Jaina Iconography (North India)'. I am glad to note here that my friend Prof. Klaus Bruhn (now in Berlin) carried out the study of Jaina Art and Iconography further by doing exhaustive studies of the Jaina shrines at Devgadh. Only the first volume entitled the Jaina