Jaina Art and Architecture Vol 02

Author(s): A Ghosh
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 60

MONUMENTS & SCULPTURE A.D. 600 TO 1000
[PART IV
rock-faces and other loose sculptures in relief and in the round. The instances being too many, only the most outstanding and well-known ones have been mentioned here. But it should be stated that a systematic iconographic survey and study of the wealth of Digambara Jaina material is yet to be made in the Tamil country.
The sculptures found at Tiruccāraṇattumalai near Chitaral, Kanyakumari District, are described later in this chapter.
Besides bas-reliefs, both rock-cut and loose, a few large sculptures in the round have also been found. From a ruined temple at Danavalapadu, District Cuddapah, Andhra Pradesh, a few sculptures were brought to the Madras Government Museum; they are fine examples of Rāşțrakūța art in black stone. A Mahāvira sculpture from Tuticorin, District Tirunelveli, is a fine Pāņdya specimen in granite. A large sculpture of a seated Tirthankara, over a metre in height, perched on the ruins of a brick temple on a mound at Puttambur (Pudukkottai, Tiruchchirappalli District), is a noteworthy Cola specimen of good proportions. A seated Tirthankara from Mosakudi in the Pudukkottai Muscum, an early specimen in granite, is rather a poor representation, while a large standing Pārsvanátha, also in granite, from Mangattevanpatti in the same Museum, is moulded much more artistically.
K.R. SRINIVASAN
REMAINS IN KERALA
Kerala has a few Jaina monuments ascribable mostly to the period from the ninth to the eleventh centuries when the Āy rulers in the south and the Ceras in central Kerala extended patronage to the Jaina faith. In the ancient Cera country, however, Jainism had a still earlier tradition, for some of their rulers had taken up the cause of that religion during the Tamil Sangam age. For instance, one of the rock-shelters at Pugalur, near Karur, in District Tiruchchirappalli, has on its brow, just below the drip-line, two Cera inscriptions of about the second century A.D. According to these epigraphs the rock (kal) was cut (arupita) for Cenkāyapan, a Jaina monk, by the grandson of Ko-Ātan Ceral Irumporai.' Some of the inscriptions near the beds and pillow
1 Annual Report on South Indian Epigraphy, 1927-28, Madras, 1929, nos. 341-49 and p. 50; Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy, 1963-64, Delhi, 1967: 1. Mahadevan, Corpus of the Tamil Brāhmi inscriptions', Seminar on Inscriptions, 1966, Madras, 1968, pp. 65-67; K.G. Krishnan, *Cera kings of the Pugalur inscriptions', Journal of Ancient Indian History, IV, Calcutta, 1970-71, pp. 137.43. [See also above, p. 101 - Editor.1
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