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CHAPTER 13]
WEST INDIA
with a pleasing countenance as laid down by Vardhamihira. The hair on the head is in schematic curls and an unisa is also shown.
Even according to the Digambara tradition noted in the Brkat-katha of Harisena, the use of drapery by some Jaina monks seems to have started in western India at a place called Kambalika-tirtha. It is, therefore, not surprising that the earliest Tirthankara image in the Svetambara fashion (i.e. with a lower garment, dhoti), known hitherto, hails from a site in western India, i.e. Akota."
No Jaina antiquities of the third and fourth centuries are known as yet. Of the fifth century, only the bronze figure of Rsbhanatha described above has been found. Of the sixth century, some more Jaina figures are available.
From Valabhi D.R. Bhandarkar discovered five bronze images of standing Tirthankaras (plate 67A), which are preserved in the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay. On the basis of the partly extant inscriptions on at least two of them, Bhandarkar assigned them to the sixth century A.D. Moreshwar Dikshit read saṁva 200(+)20(+) of the Valabhi era (A.D. 538-548) on one of them." The figures show somewhat small or stunted torsos and relatively bigger, heavier heads, which is a characteristic of the early west Indian school.
As stated above (p. 133), already in the fourth century A.D. a Council of the Jainas met in Valabhi, ünder Arya Nagarjuna. Mallavadi, the great Jaina logician and author of the Dvadaśāra-Nayacakra, defeated the Buddhists in dispute at Valabhi in circa v.s. 414 (A.D. 357). The second Council at Valabhi met in A.D. 453-54. The Jainas grew stronger in western India during this period as is further indicated by the find of these Jaina bronzes from the site of Valabhi. It may be noted that Bhandarkar also discovered a number of coins of Kumaragupta I from the same site.
1 Cf. a-janu-lamba-bahuḥ śrivatsänkaḥ prasanta-mürtiś ca dig-vdsds taruno rūpavams ca karyo' rhatam devah. Brhat-sankhiid, Bangalore, 1947, LVIII, 45.
The fact that Vardhamihira speaks of a Jina image without any drapery shows that the Svetämbara concept of a clothed Jina image had not become popular in his times, and thus was perhaps of a relatively late origin.
U.P. Shah, Akota Bronzes, Bombay, 1959. pp. 26, figs. 8a and 8b; Brhat-katha kosa, ed. A.N. Upadhye, Singhi Jaina series, 17, 131. pp. 317 ff. and introduction, p. 118.
Shah, op. cit., 1950-51, p. 36; Sculptures from Samalaji and Roda, Baroda, 1960, pp. 21-25; Studies in Jaina Art, Banaras, 1955, fig. 29.
* Progress Report, Archacological Survey of Western India, 1914-15, p. 30; Moreshwar G. Dikshit, Historic and Economic Studies, p. 63; H.G. Shastri, Maitraka-kalina Gujarat, II, pp. 668-72, and p. 671, n. 168.
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