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CHAPTER 151
EAST INDIA
appear below the respective Tirthankaras, some of them on their animal-vehicles. It is of iconographic interest to note that Bahurupiņi, the Sasana-devi of Munisuvrata, the twentieth Tirthankara, reclines on a couch.1
Most of the Khandagiri caves beyond Cave 8, Caves 9 (variously called Trisula, Satbakhra or Mahavira), 10, 11 (Lalätendukesari with an inscription of Uddyotakesarin) and 12-15, have greatly suffered from large-scale quarrying, with the result that they have lost their original plan and the sculptures in some of them can now be seen from a much lower level. Belonging to the eleventhtwelfth century, the figures of the Jinas, and less frequently of the Sasana-devis, are of iconographic interest. In Cave 9 are three standing images of Rsabhanätha in chlorite, evidently brought from somewhere else and now installed on pedestals. They belong to the age when chlorite became a favourite medium of sculpture in Orissa.
Attention may now be drawn to the Jaina image found in the Mayurbhanj area and a few other places, some of them in private collections.
Recently a beautiful Tirthankara image from Mayurbhanj attributable to tenth-eleventh century, has been acquired by the National Museum (plate 88). R.P. Mahapatra published in the Matṛbhumi (a daily in Oriya), dated January 12, 1970, an image of Rşabhanatha from Hatadiha in Jeypore Sub-division of Cuttack District, The image, as the author suggests, belongs to the tenth century. The image has the usual characteristics of Rsabhanatha. The back slab is relieved with figures of twenty-four Tirthankaras arranged in two rows of twelve each.
There are about twenty-five Jaina images mostly in stone, housed in the Digambara Jaina Mandir, Chaudhuri Bazar, Cuttack. Six of them have been published by Shabu. The images are mainly of the Tirthankaras, such as Rṣabhanatha, Candraprabha, Santinatha, Suparśvanatha and Parsvanatha, besides a few other panels. Some of them belong to the tenth-eleventh century, while others are of a later date, twelfth century or even later.
Three images, one of Parsva and two of Rsabba, were found some years back in the bed of the river, Katjhuri, a tributary of the Mahanadi. Of them
1 For this and the subsequent caves, see Mitra, op. cit., 1960, pp. 54 ff. For reclining Bahurapini, see Mitra's article referred to on p. 165, n. 3, below.
L.N. Shahu, Jainism in Orissa. When the present writer visited the Mandir on October 13, 1972, he had the good fortune of meeting the Digambara saint Nemichandraji, who had been spending his caturmäsa there. The saint took great interest in the writer's work and gave him full facilities for the study of the images.
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