________________
CHAPTER 35]
ICONOGRAPHY
7
under a cattya-tree was a later stage, but it must be remembered that even this stage might have been reached in the age of Mahavira if the shrine of Maggarapani Yakşa of Rajagṛha, referred to in Jaina canonical literature, can be regarded as dating from Mahavira's times.
Both Buddha and Mahavira and many other thinkers and sages of old used to meditate under such trees, on these platforms. This practice of meditating under trees is what Buddha seems to have resorted to, as suggested by Rhys Davids when at the end of some earnest dialogue Buddha used to close it with an appeal: 'Here are the trees: think this matter out"."
Another stage in the worship of the caitya-tree can be easily imagined in the erection of a pitha with sila-patta on each of the four sides of a tree. This served as the fundamental conception of the early caltya, open on four sides, the caturmukha shrine, also in the conception of pratima sarvatobhadrikā from Kankali-tilă, in which a Tirthankara is standing (above, plate 18) or sitting on each of the four sides. This inference is confirmed by the elaborate account of caitya-vṛksas in the samavasarana of Adinatha, described by Jinasena in his Adi-purana. They are called caltya-vrksas because at their roots are placed, on four sides, four images (caityas) of the Jinas. The caitya-trees of the Bhavanavāsi class of gods are described in a similar way by the Tiloyapannatti.
The original conception of a caturmukha-pratima (image facing four directions, fourfold image), so far as the samavasarana is concerned, is based upon the belief that in the circular auditorium in which the Jina delivers his sermon sitting on a dais in the centre, with the audience sitting on all sides, three images of the exact likeness of the Jina were installed by Indra for facing the three directions except the one which the Tirthankara himself was facing, so that all beings sitting in the different directions would be able to face the Jina. Thus, in this conception it is the figure of one and the same Jina that is to be seen facing each of the four different directions. Thus, in a fourfold image of Mahavira one should find four of images of Mahavira facing the four directions. But almost all the fourfold images found at Kankali-tilä disclose
1 Cf. Odette Viennot, Le Culte de l'Arbre dans l'Inde ancienne, plate VIIID, from the Amaravati stúpa.
2 Cf. Bhagavati-sutra, 3, 2, sutra 144, which describes Mahavira as meditating under a tree on a prthivi-la-patta.
T.W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, pp. 230-31.
• Adi-purana, 22, 184-204, 1, pp. 524-27.
• Tiloya-pannatii, 3, 33-39, I, p. 115.
483
