Jain Rup Mandan

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

Page 38

Introduction
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Jina) surrounded by a flight of steps. At a lower level or on the ground level, running around this central structure and at some distance from it is the bigger railing (a rampart) with ornamental torana-gateways. There is a third rampart which can be compared with the third railing seen on the frieze of worship from Kankali Tila, illustrated in Fig 10A.
But the elaborate Digambara description, in the Adipurăpa of Jinasena, includes in it the various constituent elements of a big city and may have incorporated in it an ideal description of a contemporary city-site with three fortifications, a surrounding moat, pleasure resorts, stepwells, theatres, lawns, lakes, palaces etc., and having in its centre the royal palace. Viewed in this light, such accounts are of special value as providing us with architectural and other cultural data.
In Kalpa-sūtra miniatures Samavasarana is generally represented as circular and occasionally square in plan. Brown's pl. 23, fig. 80 shows Mahavira sitting in the padmasana in the centre of the samavasarana, with a yakşa attendant standing on either side. Four highways lead to the Jina in the centre. The ornamental concentric bands around the Jina represent the usual fortifications. The whole is enclosed in rectangular panel, a four corners of which stand pairs of animals who have forgotten their natural animosities under the spiritual influence of the Jina whose main teaching is ahimsă. Brown's figures 113 and 126 are of a similar composition. His figure 99 represents the second type, here a samavasarana of Pärsvanatha. 136
The fresco paintings of Sittannavasal, of c. 9th-10th century, contain in the ceiling, a scene of a big lotus pond with animals such as elephants and bulls, birds, and fishes frolicking about and men gathering lotus flowers, which has been identified by Ramachandran as khätikābhūmi or the tank region, with the faithful (bhavyas) gathering lotus flowers.
The wall and ceiling paintings at Tirumalai, N. Arcot district, the ceiling at Tiruparuttikunram, at Sravana Belagola etc., also contain representations of Samavasarana in circular form.
Representations of Samavasarana are available in reliefs showing lives of different Jinas, for example. in the life of Santinātha in a ceiling in the Vimala vasahi, Abu, bhāva no. 19, and in another elaborate ceiling in a shrine at Kumbharia. Loose sculptures, mostly circular, showing three ramparts, one above the other, surmounted by a square pavilion showing the Jina sitting on each side are also obtained, a beautiful example of which from the Vimala vasahi cell 20 has been discussed by D.R. Bhandarkar. A big sized beautiful bronze structure of a similar plan, installed in the eleventh century, brought from Sirohi and now in worship in a Jaina shrine in Surat, is illustrated here. 137 Examples of such loose stone and metal sculptures and reliefs are scattered in Jaina shrines all over India. The upper part of Samavasarana, the pavilion or the Gandhakuti, with the Jina facing each side, has been a subject of representation by itself as the Caumukha (Caturmukha pratima) called Pratima-Sarvatobhadrika in Mathura inscriptions. In further later elaboration of this concept we find such four-sided sculptures and bronzes with several Tirthankaras on each face. But the practice of installing Caturmukha sculptures is an old one common to the Caitya and Yaksa worship and images were installed and worshipped on four sides of a Caitya, a pillar or a stúpa, as also in the pavilion or gandhakuti on top of a stūpa.
The square or circular Samavasarana has for its prototype the square or circular funeral mounds or structures referred to by the Satapatha Brāhmana and called Daiva and Asura Pracya respectively. Being associated with smaśäna, symbolising funeral memorials, the Jainas unlike the Buddhists did not like to install miniature Stūpa representations in their shrines and at the same time could not omit such a very popular symbol from the Jaina worship. The evolution of the Samavasarana concept gave an excellent substitute for the stūpa symbol. So far as the concept is concerned Samavasarana has nothing to do with funeral rites.
The original conception of a Caturmukha-pratimă so far as a samavasarana or the gandhakuți on top of a stúpa is concerned, shows that figures of one and the same Jina should be shown on each of the four sides. But the Pratima-Sarva tobhadrikás from Kankali Tila, Mathura, show figures of four different Tirthankaras on the four sides, two of them can be identified as Rşabhanātha and Pärávanátha and the other two possibly represented Mahavira and Neminātha. Thus the Pratima-Sarvatobhadrikäs of Kuşår a age do not always seem to imply the Samavasarana concept and some of them were certainly on the top or at the base of a kind of Jaina pillars, like the Kahaon Pillar, called Manastambhas. This is quite evident in