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MONUMENTS & SCULPTURE 300 B.C. TO A.D. 300
[PART II
the discovery has not been followed up by systematic survey and excavation. The hoard includes sixteen images of the Tirthankaras, an aśoka-tree and a dharma-cakra (plate 21C) on a post, the last ascribable to the first century A.D.
Among the images of the Tirthankaras, ten are in kayotsarga-pose, while six are seated in dhyana-mudra. The group is highly interesting on account of the fact that the images covering a period of nearly four hundred years record the artistic achievements of bronze-casters from the period of experimentation to the culmination in the well-modelled graceful figures of the Gupta period. While two of the seated images are stylistically ascribable to the post-Kushan to early Gupta period, the remaining four are of the Gupta period.
The standing images, all robeless, cover a wider period from the preKushan to the Gupta period. Some of the figures, with stump-like legs, crude workmanship and disproportionate modelling, are in folk-tradition. These primitive figures appear to be somewhat earlier than Kushan. A good Kushan example is furnished by the Patna Museum 6530 (plate 22A). Characterized by a broad chest, roundish face and open eyes, it is in the tradition of Mathura. Here, too, no attention has been paid to the modelling of legs. A considerable progress in the proportionate and graceful modelling of different limbs is noticeable in the images produced in the third-fourth century A.D. (plate 22B). Läñchanas are depicted in none of the images, so that Ṛṣabhanatha and Pārsvanatha alone can be identified by the locks of hair and serpent-hoods respectively. In the well-preserved example, the śrivatsamark is clear on the chest.
WEST BENGAL
It is not definitely known when Jainism firmly established itself in Bengal. From the Acaranga-sutra it is learnt that Mahavira received inhospitable treatment during his wanderings in Ladha (i.e. Radha) consisting of Vajjabhumi (Vajrabhūmi) and Subbhabhumi (Suhmabhümi). From a legend recorded in the Divyavadana it is generally held that Pundravardhana (in north Bengal) had
1 Patna Museum Catalogue of Antiquities, ed. Parameshwari Lal Gupta, Patna, 1965, pp. 116 and 117; Hari Kishore Prasad, 'Jaina bronzes in the Patna Museum', Shri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya Golden Jubilee Volume, I, Bombay, 1968, pp. 275-83.
[See below, Chapter 11-Editor.]
• Jaina Sutras, part I, Acdränga Sutra, trans. H. Jacobi, Sacred Books of the East, XXII, Oxford, 1884, pp. 84 and 85.
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