________________
CHAPTER 8]
WEST INDIA
That the Jainas were very active in west India during the early centuries of the Christian era is proved by the accounts of Arya Khaputa of Broach,1 and Arya Padalipta' and Nagarjuna in Saurästra (near Palitana) and Valabbi (also in Saurästra) respectively. Arya Nagarjuna was the head of the first Valabhi Council in the early fourth century A.D. Acarya Mallavadi, the great Jaina logician and author of the Dvādaśāra-Nayacakra, defeated the Buddhists in a dispute at Valabhi in early fourth century. Arya Vajra, the teacher of Arya Vajrasena, referred to above, is reported to have visited the Abhira country, Dakṣipapatha and even Srimala (modern Bhinmal in Marwar).
At Junagadh near Girnar is a group of about twenty monastic rock-cut cells, known as caves of Bawa-Pyara's Math and described by Burgess.* Arranged in three lines, these caves have a very early form of caitya-window ornament over Cave B (plate 38B). Cave F of Burgess is a primitive cell, flat-roofed, originally with four pillars, the back being like a semicircular apse. Cave K in this group has two cells with carvings of the auspicious pot-andfoliage (mangala-kalasa) and other symbols like the svastika, śrivatsa, bhadrasana, mina-yugala, etc. (fig. V), found on the Mathura ayaga-patas. These symbols could not conclusively establish the Jaina character of these dwellings, since there seems to have been an unfinished (perhaps later) attempt to add these symbols in front of one cell. But the discovery of a mutilated inscribed slab (buried in front of Cell I) of the time of the grandson of
1 Av. Nir. with Cúrni, p. 542; Nitha-Carni, 10, p. 101; Brhat-Kalpa-Bhasya. 4, 5115 ff. Also see note above.
Av. Ca., p. 554; Pinda-Niryukai, 497 f.
* Muni Kalyanavijaya. op. cit., pp. 110-18.
"Muni Jambavijayaji, Dvddasdra-Nayacakra, introduction.
Av. Ca., pp. 396-97.
⚫ Ibid, p. 404.
Av. Tika, p. 390s. Arya Vaira (Vajra) is possibly the same as Acarya-ratna Muni Vairadeva of the Sonbhandar cave inscription at Rajgir, as shown by U.P. Shab in Journal of the Bihar Research Society, XXXIX, 1953, pp. 410-12. [Others have doubted this identification, see chapter 11. The writer of the present chapter says in personal correspondence that in all known Digambara and Svetämbara literature or Pattavalis there are only two monks-Acārya Vajra and his pupil Vajrasena (in Prakrit Vaira and Vairasena) who could have been referred to in the Sonbbandar inscription; the identification suggested by him is therefore highly probable. About the date of the caves, he draws attention to S.K. Saraswati's views.-Editor.]
Burgess, Report on the Antiquities of Kathiawad and Kacch, Archaeological Survey of India, New Imperial Series, II, London, 1876, pp: 139 . H.D. Sankalia, Archaeology of Gujarat, Bombay, 1941, pp. 47-53.
89
