Jaina Monuments and Places First Class Importance

Author(s): T N Ramchandran
Publisher: Veer Shasan Sangh Calcutta

Page 23

JAINISM IN EAST BENGAL
in them in comparatively modern times, and these still exist. They have located Pāwāpuri, (or Pāvāpuri, as it is called) the place of Mahāvīna's demise, near Rājagrha on the Bihar SharifNawadah ioad.
13 JAINISM IN EAST BENGAL.
Ol particulai interest to the Jainas of East India is the find inade last year at Mamāvati, near Comilla, East Bengal of a stone image of Jaina Tirthanhara and pol-sherds from polley evidently of monastic use. Though the image could not be recovei ed as since it was found it had been secreted somewhere for salety, we have the testimony of Mr. R. M. Chakravarty, Superintendent of the Ramala Library, Comilla, who saw it when it was excavated, that it was a nude image representing a Tithankara No ollier Janna remains could be noticed in the locality We do not hear much of Jainism in East Bengal. The existence of a Jaina Vihāia in the 4th century A.D. at VataGohāli in the present site of Pāhārpur, Rajshahi District, Hiuen Tsiang's reference in the 7th century A.D. to the influence the Norgranthas had in North, South and East Bengal, the subsequent disappearance from Bengal of the sect of Nurganthas during the päla and Sena period, the probable assimilation of the Nirgranthas towards the end of the Pāla period in the Avadhūtas and such other religious sects and the re-establishment in Northern Bengal during the Muhammadan period of the old religion in its new form, thanks to the services of Jaina iminigrants from Western India - are some of the features in the developement of Jainism in Bengal. Its sway in East Bengal in contrast to the spectacular hold that Buddhism had in Bengal was not much. As at Pāhārpur, so also at Maināinati, Jainism appears to have flourished side by side with Buddhism and Brahmanism.