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THE EARLY FAITH OF AŞOKA.
81
These nade statues of the Jaina Tirthankaras teach us, like go many other subordinate indications of the remote antiquity of the creed, in its normal form, to look for parallels amid other forms of worship in their initiatory stage--and here we are inevitably reminded of the time when men made idols after their own images, and while those men, in the simplicity of nature, stood up, without shame, as the Creator had fashioned them.
The value of the dedicatory inscriptions towards the elucidation of my leading question is, however, still more precise and irrecusable, in respect to the age of the monuments themselves, in the conjoint record of the name of the great Saint Mahavira and that of Vasudeva,—the BAZOAHO of the Indo-Scythian coins above described,—the third brother, or, as the case may be, the nominal head of the third tribe of the “Hushka, Jushka, and Kanishka” once nomad community.
Of the twenty-four dated inscriptions given by General Cunningham in his Archæological Report for 1871-2, no less than seven refer either directly, or indirectly, in the forms of the pedestals and the statues to which they are attached, to the Jaina creed.
Nos. 2 and 3, dated Sam. 5; 4, dated Samvat 9, bear the name of Kanishka. No. 6, dated Sam. 20, is remarkable, as it specifies " the gift of one statue of Vardhamana" or Mahávíra.
at p. 9, a curious account of the modern Jaina reverence for the Footprints of their saints: “ Shading the temple (of Vásinghji-one of the five snake brethren, at Tbán) is a large Rdyana tree-the close foliage of small dark green oval leaves, which makes the shade so grateful, apparently having had to do with its being consecrated as a sacred tree in Western India, where it is specially dedicated by the Jainas to their first Tirthankara-Rishabhanátha—the patron saint of Satruñ. jaya- no shrine to him being complete without a Ráyaņa tree overshadowing his charana or footprints." -Mr. Burgess, Arch. Rep. 1875, p. 5.
1 Xenopbanes, colophonii Carminum Reliquiæ, by Simon Karsten (Brussels, 1830), p. vi. His interpretation of one of the leading passages of the Greek text runs: “y. At mortales opinantur natos esse Deos, mortalique habitu et forma et figura præditos." And vi. continues: “Si vero manus haberent boves vel leones, aut pingere manibus et fabricari eadem quæ homines possent, ipsi quoque Deorum formas pingerent figurasque formarent tales, quali ipsorum quisque præditus sit, equi equis, boves autem bobus similes."- p. 41. Pliny, xxxiv. p. 9, under iconica, adds the Greek practice is, not to cover any part of the “ body" of their statues. Max Müller, Sanskrit Literature, vol. ii. p. 388.
