________________
જૈન યુગ
એપ્રિલ ૧૯૫૯
the one hand and of the Pākbira image on the other are too weak a link to establish a firm connection between the medieval horsemen and the Hellenistic riding children.
The other elements of our image (adorants to the lower left and right, jar-bearers to the left and right of the heads, a seated Jina on the crown of the tree) are common features of medieval murtis and have no special connection with our motif. A child climbing the tree is found on a very large number of images of the sacred couple. That the male as well as the female figure carry a tall headdress is not very common but finds a parallel in an image at Khajuraho9. Since all the arms are broken it is impossible to say anything about the attributes in the hands. But the left upper arm of either figure is slightly damaged and it may be inferred that both figures carried in their left hand a child which was partly attached to the upper arm.
Although the piece has no stylistic peculiarities, we think that the tree and the horsemen-frieze display a realism seldom found on such images.
(Fig. 2) The second image is less carefully executed than the first but has also a few features which call for a brief comment. At the height of the heads of the principal figures a miniature-replica of the crown of the tree projects from its trunk. This is only one out of several possible elaborations of the tree of the sacred-couple-motif which may here be discussed in short:
(1) Since the Jina is usually represented under a tree, the artist adds a second crown (smaller than the first) above the crown proper on which the Jina is seated. Iconographically speaking, this second
crown is only an appendix to the miniature image of the Jina; but actually it forms a very conspicuous element within the composition. (Small image in Jaina temple No. 31 at Deogarh.)
(2) The Jina being normally seated on a lotus, the artist represents a lotus flower-sometimes emerging from a thick stalk-in front of or rather on the crown of the tree. (Image in Jaina temple No. 16 at Deogarh.)
(3) A campanulate or bell-shaped member appears immediately below the crown, representing as it were the big lower branches of the tree. (Image on the south-west corner of the great wall at Deogarh.)
(4) A miniature-replica of the crown is added immediately below the crown proper, serving as a seat for the Jina. (U. P. Shah, 1. c. Fig. 46.)
(5) A miniature crown appears far below the crown proper and serves as a seat for a child. (Our image.)
The seats of the two principal figures are clearly characterized as "modha". In Fig. 1 we find similar round seats, but there they are of a simpler type which is very common in representations of the sacred couple. Moreover the seat of fig. 1 is influenced by the lotus-seat of the Jina : lotus-petals are incised on its upper and lower zone, only the middle zone being plain.
The right foot of the male figure rests on a roughly carved lotus, the right foot of the female touches the ground. In other cases it is the other way round, or both figures place their right foot on the ground, or the lotus is completely absent. The presence of the lotus below the foot of only one of the two figures does not seem to express inequality of rank or any other difference. The artists simply availed themselves of all these four possibilities.
(9) U. P. Shah : Studies
Banaras 1955, Fig. 45.
in
Jaina Art,
