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PLACES OF PILGRIMAGE
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monuments on and near the top, and the pilgrimage is quite difficult. Near the foot are ancient Jaina caves, one of which, the Candra-guinphā, is ascribed to the emperor Chandragupta Maurya, who is said to have stayed in it for a time as an ascetic, on his way to the South. The building of the nearby Sudarśana Lake is also attributed to him. Pāwāpur: (in Patna district of Bihar), where on the bank of, or in an island in the middle of, the big lotus tank, Lord Mahāvīra attained nirvāṇa, in 527 B.C., on a day since celebrated as the nirvāņa day or the Dīpāvalī (Dīvālī). A picturesque marble temple with the footprints of the lord stands in the middle of this pucca tank. Near the bank stand several temple complexes and other fine monuments, old and new, as well
is spacious dharmaśālās. Gunāwā: (near Gaya in Bihar), the place of nirvāņa of Gautama, the chief disciple of Mahāvīra; has a temple on the banks of a fine tank.
Mathurā: (in Uttar Pradesh), the famous ancient city, place of nirvāņa of Jambū-svāmin, the last kevalin and third in pontifical succession from Gautama. A big temple, more than a century and half old, dedicated to Jambū-svāmin, stands on the Caurāsī mound, outside the city which also has several Jaina temples. In between the city and the Caurāsī Mound lies the Kaņkālī Tilā site which has yielded numerous art relics, Tirthařkara and other images, ruins of at least two temple complexes and those of the renowned Deva-stūpa which is believed by the archaeologists to have been the oldest known structural monument in India, barring the Indus Valley excavations. The Jaina antiquities from Mathurā prove that there must have been a very flourishing Jaina establishment there, at least from third century B.C. to the eleventh century A.D.
Patna: (capital of Bihar), was the chief city of the great Magadha empire during the regimes of the Nandas and the Mauryas.
