Jainism in Bihar

Author(s): P C Roy Choudhary
Publisher: P C Roy Choudhary Patna

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inscriptions were detected. The largest inscription is at Simagunda near Nimidih Railway Station and contains six lines.
There are several other villages which were not noticed by Beglar but which evidently had exclusive Jain images when Beglar travelled through the district. Some of these Jain antiquities are still to be seen although there has been a lot of vandalism on them. One of the most important of such villages is Karcha about six miles from Purulia. There are a large number of Jain statues and five ancient mounds, the excavation of which is likely to yield fruitful results. At Bhawanipur which is about one mile to the east of Karcha village an inscription has been found on the pedestal of an undoubtedly Jain Tirthankar Rishavnath.
This village Bhawanipur, about 8 miles east of Purulia, was apparently a centre of Jainism in the past. The clear image of Rishavnath has 24 Tirthankars engraved on the sides and there are also the usual figures of Chamaris, Incensors and Yakshis. By the side of this image under a tree the writer also saw another small image of Chakreshwari Devi. Under another tree nearby in the same village of Bhawanipur there is a Jain figure of a person on an animal which looks like a Makar (crocodile). The seated person has a sword in one hand and a bell in the other. The animal in this figure is taken by some as a dog but there is no place of a Kukurbahan image (where the dog is the mode of conveyance). Under the same tree there is also an image of Padmavati and Dhanendra. Apparently the image has been torn from its environments. The image of Padmavati and Dhanendra is now taken to be Hara-Parvati.
Another such village is Anai about three miles from Karcha, on the river Kasai. Nearabout Anal village there are other ruins of brick built old temples some with broken images and some without any. Many of the images that had been observed in these Jain temples 30 years back have
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