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Introduction
nemicarita, Krşņadāsa's Vimalanātha Purāna, Brahmancmidatia's Neminātha Purāna.
No body can believe that such a number of books written with the avowed object of giving truth to the believers may have related only unhistorical fictitious bcings ! Making reasonable allowance for the glorification and exaggeration which cach religion attaches to its heroes, we have reason to place our credence in thc historical authenticity of the 24 Tīrthaikaras. According to the Jaina notion, Tīrthaikaras are superior 10 gods inasmuch as a Tīrthamkara is approaching salvation whcrcas a God is merely a heavenly being subject to births and dcaths. This relative position is made inore conspicuous in the Jaina sculptures as we shall see later on, where the main figures of Tirthamkaras are worshipped or served by some surrounding gods, goddesses, and other heavenly beings as only their subordinates. Origin of Jaina Images.
It is a time-honoured custom of India to instal images for the purposes of private and public worship. Neither the Buddhists nor the Jainas disregarded it and in fact, by assimilation completely developed a system of their own with a multitude of images with canonical and mythic details which we utilise today in our iconographical studies. With the Jainas, the images no doubt originated froin their Tirthainkaras. The governing idea of an image scems to be that it reminds a believer of the condition through which a Tirthamkara passed to attain salvation and that allords him a strong incentive to follow the noble example of the Tirtharkara in life. This applies to all image or relic worship. The insluence left behind by the Jinas after their deaths lingered on for sometime. And soon, devotees found it necessary to preserve the glorious memory of thicir prophets by setting up their statues principally in the sacred places associated with their lives. The literature belonging to them also supplies a clue to this point. Jacobi writes, "Lives of the Jinas were probably not intended for biographical treatises, but served a liturgical purpose, for when the images of the Tīrthamkaras are worshipped in the temples they are adressed with hymns, one of which sums up the halfāņakas or auspicious moments. It is with thesc Kalyanakas that the lives of the finas
