Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 76

Sanjaya. We can recognize in Gosala the Gosala of Ajivika faith, and in Nigantha Nathaputta the last and twenty-fourth tirthankara Mahavira. The god Ksuna Deva in the description of Yuan Chwang indicates that he is referring probably to the naked Jaina tirthankara; and the term tirthakas also standing for tirthakaras or tirthankaras.
The advent of Jainism in Afghanistan is indeed a revelation. The term Ksuna Deva may probably stand for the term Suna or Sisna Deva. Going back to the Rg Veda for a moment, we find references to naked gods -- Sisna Devas -- in two hymns which invoke Indra for protection of Vedic sacrifices from these gods:
Oh Indra! No evil spirits have impelled us nor fiends, or mighty gods with their devices. Let our true God subdue the hostile rabble. Let not the naked gods (Sisna Devas) approach our holy yajna or worship (VII-22-5).
On most auspicious path he [Indra) goes to battle. He toiled to win heaven's light, full pain to gain it. He seized the hundred-gated castle's treasure by craft, unchecked, slaying (in the affair) naked gods (Sisna Devas] (X.93.3).
Macdonnell, in his Vedic Mythology (p.155), remarks that the worship of Sisna Devas was repugnant to the Rig Veda. Indra is besought not to let Sisna Devas approach Vedic sacrifices, and it is said that Indra was to have slain the Sisna Devas when he stealthily saw treasures hidden in a fort provided with one hundred gates.
Perhaps these two riks also indicate a truth that we are now recognizing in the Harappa statuette; a full-fledged Jain tirthankara in the characteristic pose of physical abandon (kayotsarga), a pose which has been immortalized in the later day colossal statues of Jain tirthankaras and siddhas such as at
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