Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): D C Sirkar
Publisher: University of Calcutta

Page 45

VI JAINISM IN EARLY INSCRIPTIONS OF MATHURĀ Sm. Kalyani Bajpeyi, Centre of Advanced Study in AIHC,
Calcutta University.
In Mathurā, we come across a large number of small dedicatory inscriptions incised on the images of Jinas as well as on votive tablets, arches, etc. Some of the epigraphs are dated. Most of these come from the Kankāli Tilā (mound) and show that, in the first and second centuries of the Christian era, Jainism was in a flourishing condition in that region. However, the earliest Jain inscription recording the erection of an ornamental arch of the temple by a layman named Uttaradāsaka, the disciple of the ascetic Māgharakṣita, has been assigned to 150 B.C.2 Another inscriptions of the Kuşāņa period dated in the year 49 of the Kaņişka (Saka) era records the establishment of an image of the Arhat Nandyāvarta“ at the Vodva stūpa, built by the gods (Vodve thupe deva-nirmite). The stūpa seems to have been so old that it was believed by the people to have been built by the gods. The Tirthakalpa or Rājaprasāda of Jinaprabha, a fourteenth-century work based on ancient materials, narrates the construction and repair of the 'stūpa, built by the gods'. According to this work, the stūpa, originally made of gold and embellished with precious
1 Lüders' List, No. 93. 2 Bühler in Academy, Vol. XXXIX, p. 378. 3 Lüders' List, No. 47.
4 Arhat Nandyāvarta is, as translated by Führer (Progress Report of the Lucknow Museum, 1891, p. 16), 'the Arhat whose mark is the Nandyvarta symbol', that is to say, Aranātha, the 18th Tirthařkara who had the said symbol of cognisance. The reading Nandyävarta is accepted by scholars like Bühler (Ep. Ind., Vol. II, p. 204), Smith (The Jain Stüpa and Other Antiquities of Mathurā, 1969, p. 12) and Lüders (List. No. 47). K. D. Bajpai (JUPHS, Vols. XXIV-XXV, p 220), reads the word as Manisurvartra referring to the 20th Jina. (Deva-nirmita=built by the king ? --Ed.]
5 Smith, op. cit., p. 15.