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JAINA EPIGRAPHS: PART I
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images of the Yaksha pair, Dharaņēndra and Padmãvati. Padmāvati was surinounted by the Kirtimukha motif and held in her four hands, a goad, a rosary, a noose and a fruit. The other collateral shrine possessed an image of Mabāvīra of like workmanship and appearance. On the two sides of its entrance were set up the images of Mahāvīra and Chauvisa Tirthakara, necessarily of smaller size.
The other two temples were in ruins and the images owned by them were dislodged and seriously tampered with. Mention must be made here of two inscribed slabs standing in the first temple described above. The writing on them was almost completely wiped out and, as I have narrated in the introductory remarks of inscription No. 17, this was a deliberate act on the part of the temple priest. Had they been in good condition, the epigraphs should have furnished much useful information regarding the local history of the Jaina faith. Save the solitary family of the priest, no followers of the faith bad survived, neither in this village, nor in the neighbouring locality. It was no wonder then that the Jaina antiquities, as related above, had fallen a helpless victim to the forces of decay and destruction, and their condition was wors with the passage of time. The above notice of the few surviving r enough to vouchsafe the fact that the village must have been an influential centre of the Jaina creed in the heyday of its glory; and this fact becomes all the more significant, as it should be, when viewed in the larger context of its having been a Brahmanical agrahāra on the testimony of some of the wellpreserved epigraphs of the locality.
HATTANŪRU This village situated in the Afjalpur taluk of the Pāyagā Jāgir is about 26 miles to the south-west of Gulbarga To a superficial observer it might appear that this place was devoid of the vestiges of the Jaina creed on account of the overwhelming predominance of the temples and other objects of the Virasaiva cult. A close and careful investigation however has revealed the existence of the following relics of the Jaina faith: i) A small temple was found in a desolate condition in a corner of the village. Two images of the Tirthakaras in the seated posture of Palyankāsana were noticed in the main shrine of the temple. ii) Another image of Chauvisa Tirthakara standing in the Kāyõtsarga posture was detected in the same temple oustide the main shrine. ii) One more Tirthakara image was lying in the premises of this temple. iv) A detached stone pedestal bearing the figures of lions, which should have originally belonged to an image of Vardhamāna, now missing, was built into the fort wall near the main gate of the village.
At the entrance of the main shrine referred to above were seen the sculptures of two Dvārapālakas bearing the Vaishnavite attributes of
