Book Title: Jaina Art and Architecture Vol 03
Author(s): A Ghosh
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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Page 164
________________ CHAPTER 351' : ICONOGRAPHY gold; his beard and moustache were well-dressed and grown in proportion to his age. His chin was well-set and well-developed like that of a lion; his neck, four angulas in length, looked like the conch (kambu-griva). His shoulder was broad and rounded (pratipürna) like that of the buffalo, the bull, the lion, the boar and the elephant; his round, well-developed muscular arms, with steady joints, were long like the latch of a city-gate; his hands, big and strong, looked like a cobra with expanded hood; his palms were soft and muscular, red and endowed with auspicious marks and had webbed fingers with no intervening space in between (acchidra-jala-pani), a typical trait found on Buddha images of the Gupta period, not yet available on any image of the Kushan age; the fingers again wero both thick and soft with nails red and shining like copper. His palms showed marks of the moon, the sun, the conch, the cakra and the svastika, etc. He had a broad chest well-developed and even, shining like a bar of gold, and having the mark of the Srivatsa; his back was strong with bones invisible under the muscles. He had a beautiful healthy body shining like gold. His sides were well-developed, beautiful and symmetrical; the hair on his body was pure, soft, slight, oily, delicate and charming. His abdomen was strong and well-developod (pina) like that of the fish and the bird, his belly like that of the fish, all the organs of his body pure and defectless; his navel, deep and developed like the newly-blossomed lotus, was spiral (pradaksinavartta) inside like the whirling wave of the Gangā. The torso or the middle of his body was like the tripod, the pestle, the mirror or the thunderbolt, broad at ends and narrow in the middle; his hips were like those of the best horse or the lion, his privies like those of a horse, clean and well-formed. He had the gait of the best of elephants; his thighs were shaped like the trunk of an elephant: his knee-joints were invisible as if under the lid of a spherical box; his shanks were like those of a deer; his ankles were well-set and invisible under muscles; bis feet, beautiful and well-built like those of tortoise, looked beautiful with close-set fingers having copper-red nails. The soles of his feet, soft and red like the lotus-leaf, showed marks of a mountain, a city, crocodile, ocean, disc, etc. Brilliant like a glowing fire, the lightning-flash or the rising sun, Mahāvira possessed all the one thousand and eight marks of the best of human beings. All the Tirthankara or the Buddha images are based on the fundamental concept of maha-purusa-laksanas. The Jaina description seems to suggest, indirectly, the unisa but not the ürna. Hardly half-a-dozen Tirthankara images So far known or published would show the ürnă. The uşnisa is almost invariably seen, but images without it are also known from Mathurā and 475

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