________________
Sidelights on the Life Time Sandalwood Image of Mahâvîra
217
as it is consistent while the Chinese Buddhist accounts are not definite about the original place of the installation of the Buddha image. Again, Arya Suhasti is said to have visited Vidisa to pay his respects to the Life-time statue (Jivantasvami) of Mahâvîra when the Jaina saint could convert Samprati, the grandson of Asoka, to the Jaina Faith. There is no reason to discard the Jaina traditions about Samprati and his teacher Suhasti as wholly unreliable, in the absence of sufficient evidence contradicting it. And, Hemacandra actually narrates how his contemporary Kumarapala recovered an image of Mahâvîra from the buried remains of Vitabhayapattana, along with an inscribed charter given by Uddayana for the maintenance of its worship.5 This image was, as has been shown by Hemacandra, a copy of the first sandalwood image of Mahdvira, and like the first one, was also prepared in the life-time of Mahâvîra.6 These considerations lead us to believe in the tradition that a sandalwood image of Mahâvîra was actually worshipped as an idol installed in a shrine during the life-time of Mahâvîra. Besides, if we remember the fact that a Mauryan torso of a Tirthankara image is already obtained from Lohanipur, near Patna, proving that Jina image was being worshipped in the third or the fourth century B .C., we should have no hesitation in believing that a sandalwood image of Mahâvîra was worshipped in his life-time, in the sixth century B.C.
The account given by me in my paper on Jivantasvami, shows that King Uddayana and Queen Prabhavati of SindhuSauvira worshipped this image in their palace at Vitabhayapattana. Now, this Prabhavati was a daughter of Cetaka, the king of Vesali. Cetaka was a follower of the Jaina faith, possibly of the school of Parsvanatha. His sister was the mother of Mahâvîra, while Jyestha, another daughter of Cetaka was given in marriage to Nandivarddhana, the elder brother of Mahâvîra. A third daughter of Cetaka became a queen of Pradyota of Avanti?.
One more fact about Uddayana and Prabhavati, noted by the Avasyakacurnis and followed by Hemacandra?, may be noted here. Once while Prabhavati was dancing before the said image, Uddayana was playing upon a vina to give her necessary musical accompaniment. But the king could not see the head of his queen and the rod fell from his hand. Prabhavati, upon learning the cause of this sudden break in tunes, realised that it was an omen
