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मुस्लिमो द्वारा जैन मन्दिरो का मस्झिद में परिवर्तन.
( मूर्ति विरोधीओ ने एक समय हजारो जैन मन्दिरो को नाश कर उस जगह अपनी मस्झिद बना दी सं. १००० से १५०० के बीच )
Jain Education International
16/2/2000
Below Fatehpur Sikri lies a Jain city
ASI team unearths 34 exquisite sculptures, all pointing to 11th century Jain temple
Remains of an 11th century Jain temple near the Akbar fort (Top). A Saraswati dating back to 1010 AD (Right). Egress photos by Naveen Jo
SANTWANA BHATTACHARYA FATEHPUR SIMRI, FEBRUARY 15
win a jungle on December 7, 1999. That was a day before the surveyor from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) identified the mound near the fort of Fatehpur Sikri and or dered the f felling of trees
And within a fortnight, the ASI team laid open the superstructure of an 11th century Jain temple, just half a lon away from Mughal Emperor Akbar's fa mous fort complex
These was habitation and it was destroyed. The divine images were broken and scattered helter skelser by the latter day invaders" is how ASI Director General Ajay Shankar briefly put it While
trenches at the site, the ASI team
came upon one of the richest archacological caches found since the glorious days of Sir John Mar
ASI DG dies in mishap
NEW DELHI Aja Shankar, secre tary to the government and ASI D rector General, died on Monday night in a car accident near Nashik He was 57. Shankar warn an nanodal tour to Pune, Nashik and Au rangabad. At about 9pm, the car be was traveling in collided with a trac for brolley near Nashk, He was de cared dead when taken to hospital
"Dumped one upon the other, it seemed the sculptures were just waiting for us to bring them out into the open," said 26 year-old archaeologist from
Orissa, Arakhita Pradhan. In fact, the Indian Exprese team which visited the site saw sculptures of Jain Tashankara and carved red-stone potteries, still half buried between the layers of
carth
Not one or two. But at least 34 exquisite sculptures of various the sizes
medium and one EXPRESS
hig have already been re
trieved by the EXCLUSIVE
ASI team from a 250-sq yard plot at Hir Chhabili ka-Tilla in Sikri village. And these findings have pushed back the untiquity of Fatehpur Sikri to 2nd Century AD
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"We've found branded red stone potteries, orsamented with mica dust, from the Gupta pe riod. And the most remarkable thing about these sculptures in that they have inscriptions on them making their dates inde putable," said RK Dikshit, sistant.com servator, in charge of the Fatehpur Sikri Most breathtak of 1
was, of course, the six-foot-high partly broken, ibang Saraswati from the Jain pantheon. Of a rare beauty, it was found in a face-down position.
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was dug out on January 29 It's changed the entire worth of the site," said Dharamvir Shanna
AST's superintending archaeolo gist who is responsible for initialing the excavation
The excavation, according to Sharma, shows that Fatehpur Sik was a pre-Mughal city with tem ples around its periphery. "But we are yet to ascertain when they were demolished," he said, clearly the but hodging on whether it s Mughals or a Hindu invader of a previous period who was respon ble for the wide-scale destruction CONTINUED ON PAGE
Below Fatehpur Sikri,
lies an ancient Jain city
Says historian Harbans Mulia, who specialises on Medieval India and plans to take a
and Kartikeya on right side) to 9 10th Century Jain sculptures (a Sarawati from the Gurjar Pr luradynasty)
trip to the site "Ta "Tim not surprised by the lindings Medieval society workest in a different manner. De molitions in that age were con ducted at an act of conquest or
However, more than the unique Sarwati (incidentally. dressed only in ornament) is the 60-cm redstone land in which 23
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