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CHAPTER 26]
EAST INDIA
dominant role in the stirring political events of the eighteenth century. Patna (Bihar) as well was coming into prominence; several other places in eastern India also grew into importance in connexion with the trade handled by the different European Companies, especially the English East India Company. With their traditional commercial outlook Jaina communities from western India flocked to these places.
In this situation there naturally ensued brisk artistic activities under the patronage of Jaina migrants from western India. It is difficult to say, however, how far such activities belong to eastern India in the sense of an indigenous movement. The Jaina communities of western India were, and still are, mostly of Svetambara persuasion. The Svetambaras generally prefer to have images carved in white marble for installation in their temples; the exception is those of the nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-second and twenty-third Tirthankaras. As marble is not available in eastern India, the Jaina patrons had, and have, to import finished images in marble chiefly from Rajasthan, which was, and is, the most reputed centre of marble-carving, for consecration in the land of their adoption. Jaina sculpture in eastern India of this period may, hence, be said to be chiefly of Rajasthani origin. Nor is any purposeful architectural form seen to have been developed under Jaina patronage during this period. Many shrines were doubtless raised; one may cite, for instance, the Jaina temples at Jiaganj and Ajimganj, near Murshidabad, as exemplifying the style developed under Jaina patronage during this period. The emphasis was chiefly on lavish ornamentation by carving and fretwork in marble, again of Rajasthani extraction, and not infrequently by imported tilework in colour or by glass and ceramic mosaic. Even the much-publicized Badridas temple in Calcutta (incidentally it may be noted that it falls outside our chronological scope) fails to impress except as a work of decorative architecture. The participation of eastern India in Jaina art during the period seems to be negligible."
S.K. SARASWATI
[2 During the late medieval period the hills at Rajgir and Parasnath in Bihar, the latter identified with Sametaśikhara, which is believed to be the spot where most of the Tirthankaras are said to have attained nirvana, continued to be popular Jaina centres. At both these places inscriptions on Tirthankara and other sculptures and on padukas attest to the continued activities of the pious Jainas (Ambalal Premchand Shah, Jaina-Tirtha-saṁgraha, I (in Gujarati), Ahmedabad, 1953, pp. 453-63 and pp. 444-47. But monuments of the period are virtually non-existent. Professor Saraswati, in correspondence, says that according to the information received by him from Shri Bijoy Singh Nahar, a Trustee of the Rajgir temples, none of the present temples at Rajgir is
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