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CHAPTER 10
MATHURA
THE AVAILABLE MATERIAL
WITH THE ADVENT OF THE GUPTAS IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE FOURTH century, Jaina art and architecture seem to have suffered a heavy blow in Mathura. It is worth noting that against the large number of Tirthankara images, dyaga-patas, caitya-stambhas, vedikd-stambhas, coping-stones, pillars, architraves and carved architectural fragments in red spotted sandstone of the earlier period, the number of such pieces is amazingly reduced in the Gupta age. The Archaeological Museum at Mathura (AMM) and the State Museum at Lucknow (SML), which house the bulk of Mathură antiquities, respectively possess only thirty-eight and twenty-one Jaina sculptures which can be definitely attributed to the Gupta age. Exact information on the number of such sculptures in other museums in this country and abroad is not readily available, but none seems to possess Mathura figures of the period in any considerable number.
The position of the architectural pieces of the Gupta age is still worse. Not a single Jaina piece of any interest exists either in the Lucknow or in the Mathura Museum. Nor are there any terracotta figures.
All this naturally leads one to believe that after the Kushan age Jainism suffered a great set-back at Mathura, but it is difficult to find any reasons therefor. We do hear of a quarrel between the Jainas and the Buddhists in which the former came out successful.1 Even if this victory of the Jainas was of a temporary nature and the Buddhists were fairly dominant in the Gupta age at Mathura, this quarrel could have hardly damaged the very roots of the Jaina faith.
Royal patronage of the Brahmanical cults can be adduced as another reason but cannot be the only cause. The Kahaum stone-pillar inscription of
1 Vyanahara-Bhirya, 5, 27, 28; Vividha-Kalpa-stra of Jinaprabha, ed. Jinavijaya. Santiniketan, 1934, pp. 17-18.
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