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CENTRAL INDIA but reported to have been brought from Nachna." Plate I of Williams shows & Jina sitting in padomdrana on a cushion placed on a pedestal. Near cach end of the pedestal is a lion, while in the centre is dharma-cakra with the rim facing us. On each side of the dharma-cakra is a knocling worshipper, perhaps a ganadhara (first disciple of a Jina) or a monk.
The second figure shows in all four worshippers in front of the pedestal. The face and head are better preserved and the modelling of the shoulders and torso is in the best Gupta tradition. So far as the expression of the face is concerned, the image ranks amongst the best examples of Jina sculptures of the Gupta period, though the sculpture is perhaps slightly later than the one on plate I of Williams. The resemblance of these Jinas with the famous Sarnath Buddha has already been noted by Williams.
There must have been many centres producing Jina images in the Gupta period, as is demonstrated by the Mathura Museum specimen B. 6,9 etc., by the Nachna-Sira Pahari Tirthankaras, the now-defaced Parsvanatha in the Udaigiri cave and the three images dedicated in the reign of Råmagupta near Vidišā. The Vidiša images are no doubt heavier and more muscular.
It is not unlikely that the beginning of the Jaina settlement in Deogarh Fort, Jhansi District, was almost contemporaneous with the famous Dašavatāra temple of the Gupta age at Deogarh. In his study of the Jina images at Deogarh Klaus Bruhn has published at least two images (his fig. 20, image 8, and fig. 21, image 9)," which have been suspected by Williams to be early Gupta of the Mathură group. The affinity with the Mathura style is obvious, but whereas fig. 20 image 8) of Bruhn may date from the fifth century, his fig. 21 (image 9) is indeed later, as is clear from the rendering of the scarf and modelling of the figures of the attendant flywhisk-bearers. This figure may belong to the end of the sixth century. Even though the figure of the Tirthaikara is reminiscent of early Gupta Mathura traits, it is difficult to assign it to the carly Gupta age.
Two rock-cut reliefs at Gwalior (plate 60B), one showing Tirthankara standing in meditation (küyotsarga-mudrd) and the other representing a Jina meditating in the padmasana-posture, seem to date from the very end of this
1 Joanna Williams, Two new Gupta Jina images', Orlental Art, XVIII, 4, Winter, 1972. Pp. 378-80.
. (Above, chapter 10.-Editor) • Klaus Bruhn, The Jina Image of Decgark, Lolden, 1969, • Williams, op. cit., p. 380,8. 13.
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