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CHAPTER 8)
WEST INDIA Uddayana. Hemacandra further says that these were brought to Patan and the image was installed in a new shrine by Kumarapala, whose leanings towards and patronage of Jainism are well-known.
If this contemporary account is true, and it is difficult to believe that a person of the stature of Hemacandra would have cared to fabricate it or narrate from hearsay, then we have to admit that even during the life-time of Mahavira Jaina art and Jina worship had spread not only in MalwaAvanti region but also westward as far as Sindhu-Sauvira. According to the Jaina canonical text Bhagavati-sūtra; 13, 6, 191, Mahavira had gone to Vitabhayapattana to ordain king Uddayana who wanted to pay a visit to Mahåvira.
A very old bronze of Parsvanátha standing in the kâyotsarga-pose, with the right hand and a part of the snake-hoods overhead mutilated, exists in the collections of the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay (plate 36A). Its pedestal is missing, and unfortunately there is no record of its original findspot. It bears close affinity in style with a terracotta figurine from Mohenjo-daro. The limbs are long and slim and can also be compared with those of the Mohenjo-daro dancing girl. The modelling of the torso, especially of the belly and abdomen, closely allied to the highly-polished torso of a Jina image from Lohanipur, now in the Patna Museum (above, chapter 7; plate 21A), and the Harappa red stone torso. Thus the bronze is modelled in the Indus style which seems to have continued down to the Mauryan age. The physiognomy is peculiar, also comparable with that of the Mohenjo-daro bronze dancing girl and a few Mauryan and early Sunga mother-goddess terracottas from Mathurā, Hathras and other sites. It is difficult to assign a correct age or provenance to the bronze in the absence of any record, but the stylistic comparisons cited here clearly show that it cannot be later than circa 100 B.C. and may be even earlier.
* Ibid., parva 10, sarga 12, verscs 36-93.
Jain, op. cit., p. 309; Brhat-Kalpa-Bhasya, II, p. 314, and IV, pp. 1073 f. ; Bhdsya, gdthds 912-13.
* U.P. Shah, 'An early bronzo of Parsvandtha', Bulletin of the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, 3, 1952-53, pp. 63-65 and plates.
Joha Marshall, Mohenjo-daro and the fandon Cixlization, London, 1931, III, p. XCV, 26 and 27; Mackay, Further Bxcavation ar Mahonfo daro, New Delhi, 1938. II, p. LXXXII 6, 10, 11 and pl. LXXV, 1, 21.
Marshall, op. cit., pl. XCIV. 6-8. For some terracotta comparable with this bronze, soe D.H. Gordon. "Early terracottas', Journal of the Indian Sectery of Oriental Art, XI, 1943.