Jaina Tirthas in India and Their Architecture

Author(s): Sarabhai Manilal Nawab
Publisher: Sarabhai Manilal Nawab

Page 12

INTRODUCTION CHE publisher of this volume has indeed rendered an inestimable 1 service to Gujarāt by presenting his collection of the photographs of the Jaina tīrthas and their architecure. His work entitled the Jaina Chitrakalpadruma; which containes photographs from the illustrated manuscripts of the Kalpasūtra and other Jain religious works, has already aquainted us with the patronage given to Fine Arts by the followers of Jainism from times immemorial. Architectural relics, however, by dint of the more durable nature of their material, can be traced to more antique times than paintings.
It is a well-known fact that the Jaina Art of fashioning images is almost conterminous with the Buddhist art. Thus Jaina icons were fashioned in all periods and in all the schools of Indian sculpture.
No one has succeeded in giving a continious history of Indian iconography and architecture every since their inception. But from the descriptions of deities found in the ancient Vedic literature it can be said that icons of those deities did exist in the Vedic period. The images of Indra, Ambikā and other deities have continued even upto the modern times and it makes it possible that sculptors of older Vedic tradition did exist when the Jainas and the Buddhists found it necessary to make images and statues of their deities, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Tirthankaras, Yakshas and Yakshinis.
The sculptors of the stones age had erected stones with strange figures in memory of their heroes and forefathers. And it is quite possible that this example may have inspired the erection of pillars near temples in later civilized days. At the same time certain points of difference are observed between divine and human figures. The oldest stone image of historical times is of king Ajātasatru (552 B.C. to525 B.C.) of the Saiśunāga dynasty from Magadha or Bihar. It has now been preserved in the Curzon Museum of Archaeology at Muttra and is contemporaneous with the Buddha. The statue is 8-8" in height. Besides these two statues were found from near Patna-one of them is of Aja-uddiya, grandson of Ajätasatru, (founder of Pațaliputra, died in 467 B.C.) and the other, of his son Nandivardhana (died 418 B. C.). These are now kept in the Indian Museum at Calcutta. All these three statues are carved in the same style and are of more