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RELIGION AND CULTURE OF THE JAINS
Beglar believed that the building belonged to the Śrāvakas or Jains as one of the rooms contained the foot-print of a Tirthańkata, 68 The Jain temple on the.summit of the hill is of modern date. The general character of the ruins of temples, tanks, images and inscriptions found from the Mandār hill show that it has been a sacred place of both the Jains and the Hindus.
Another important sacred place of the Jains in Bihar in the Kuluha hill, about 6 miles to the south-west of /untergunje in the Hazaribag District. On the western foot of the hill, Stein 67 noticed a small mound of stones, with a small Jain image of Pārsvanātha with the usual snake-hood canopy over its head. Local people call it Dvārapāla. There are two groups of crude rock-cut sculptures of the Jain Tirthankaras known as Daśāvatāra images, apparently for their
per ten in each group. The first group consists of five standing and five seated figures of the Jains. Another group of ten figures of the Jinas, located at a short distance, are all seated and each of them have a female chowrie-bearer on either side.68 The sculptures are highly corroded and defaced and contain inscriptions on the top, which require fresh examination.
Stein noticed a pair of foot-prints cut into the rocks and considered them to be of the Jain Tirthařkaras though the local people believed them to be of Vişņu. The inscriptions
66 ASR, Vol. VIII, pp. 130ff. See also Buchanan, Bhagalpur, pp. 122ff.; Ind. Ant., Vol. I, pp. 51ff.; Bihar District Gazetteers--Bhagalpur, pp. 31ff.; ASI, AR, Bengal Circle, 1903, pp. 8-9.
67 Ind. Ant., Vol. XXX, pp. 90ff. See also JASB, 1901, pp. 31-37.
68 P. C. Roychoudhury, op. cit., Pl. III. For details about the Kuluha hill, see Hunter, op. cit., Vol. XVI, p. 29; BODG-Hazaribagh, p. 202; P. C. Roychoudhury, op. cit., pp. 40ff. In 1953, Kuluha hill was visiied by D. C. Sircar who has published an inscription of the place giving the name of Paramabhaffäraka Mahäräjādhirāja Vişnugutpa whom srcar assigns to theL ater Gupta dynasty. [The Later Gupta monarch Vişnugupta flourished about the close of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century A.D.--Ed.]
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