Jain Rup Mandan

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

Page 51

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Jaina-Rupa-Mandana
The men of this city were . . . attached to heretical learning... no one paid it respect. Afterwards there was an Arhat who bowed and saluted the image... the king issued a decree that the stranger should be covered with sand and earth . . . A man who had himself honoured the image with worship, secretly gave food to the Arhat... buried upto the neck. The Arhat... said: Seven days hence there will be a rain of sand and earth which will fill this city full, and there will in a brief space be none left alive... This man escaped and went to the east... (and) the statue appeared behind him..."43
But Fa-Hien, who visited India in c. 400 A.D., giving an account about a sandalwood image of the Tathāgata being carved and installed when the Buddha went to heaven to preach his mother, lays the scene in Śrāvasti rather than in Kauśambi in the account given by Hiuen-Tsang. This image was installed by King Prasenajit of Kośala. It was carved out of a sandalwood called gośirşacandana. Says Fa-Hien, "When Buddha returned and entered the vihara, the image, immediately quitting its place, went forward to meet him. On this Buddha addressed these words to it: Return, I pray you, to Your seat. After my Nirvana you will be the model from which my followers... shall carve their images... This image, as it was the very first made of all the figures of Buddha, is the one which all subsequent ages have followed as a model..."44
We are thus faced with similar accounts, one Jaina and the other Buddhist. Both speak of sandalwood images of their leaders carved in their life-time. At least one of the two traditions must be reliable even if one sect borrowed the account from the other. Since the Mahayana Buddhists had to account for image worship it would seem that they are the borrowers. Again, because Samprati was converted to Jainism by Arya Suhasti at Vidiśā (according to another tradition at Ujjain) during the ratha-yatra of the Jivantasvāmī image, it is well nigh certain that the tradition of the sandalwood image in Jainism is as old as and even somewhat earlier than the age of Samprati, the grandson of Aśoka. So far as the Sravasti image of Buddha is concerned, the tradition is certainly older than the visit of Fa-Hien who reports about it. Actually there is a relief sculpture from Gandhara depicting the incident of the Sravasti image and the Buddha returning from the heaven. This means that for the Gandhara artists the first Buddha image was carved and installed at Sravasti. There is nothing unreasonable in believing that during the life-time of both Buddha and Mahavira attempts were made to carve out their portraits and to worship them. Even portrait painting might also have been attempted.45 The fact that Buddha asked his followers not to install his image as a cult object shows that such attempts were indeed made during Buddha's life-time.
As already suggested before, at least one of the two legends-namely, the Jaina and the Buddhistmust have behind it some historical background or core around which other legendary and supernatural elements are woven. These remarks apply also to the story of Udrāyaṇa or Rudrāyaṇa of Roruka (in Sauvira) obtained in the Rudrayaṇāvadāna chapter of the Divyavadana and in the Avadanakalpalată of Kşemendra. P.S. Jaini has further brought to our notice a Pali version entitled Vaṭṭāngulirāja Jātaka from a collection known as the Pannåsa Jätaka "which probably originated in the 13th or 14th century in northern Chieng-Mai."46
REFERENCES
1. Marshall, Sir John, Mohen-Jo-Daro and the Indus Valley Civilisation, vol. I, pl. xii, figs. 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22; Jaina, Kamta Prasad in Modern Review, August, 1932, pp. 152ff, regards some of these as representing Jina figures.
2. Marshall, ibid., xii.17, pp. 52ff.
3. The Jainas believe that 24 Tirthankaras lived in this avasarpiņi era (āra), and an equal number lived in the preceding utsarpini (evolutionary) era, and the same number will be born in the forthcoming utsarpiņi ārā.
For the Jaina conception of these evolutionary and involutionary eras, see Jaina, J.C., Outlines of Jainism, p. xxvi; also, Nahar and Ghosh, Epitome of Jainism. 4. Marshall, op. cit., vol. I, pl. x.a-d.
For the Lohanipur torso see Jayaswal, K.P., in Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. xxiii, part I, pls. i-iv. Also see Banerji-Shastri, Mauryan Sculptures from Lohanipur-Patna, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. xxvi, part 2, pp. 120ff.
5. B.M. Barua's revised readings in Indian Historical