Religion and Culture of the Jains

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

Page 48

SM. K. BAJPEYI
e.g., 'adoration to the Arhats'16 'adoration to the Arhats, the highest ones in the whole world,'17 'adoration to all the Siddhas, to the Arhats',18 'adoration to the Arhat Vardhamana',19 'adoration to the Arhat Mahavira', 20 etc.
39
In the period under review, image-worship was vary popular among the Jains although worship of the Jina image was in vogue as early as the fourth century B. C. According to the Hathigum pha inscription, 21 a Jina statue, which had been carried away from Kalinga to Magadha by some Nanda king, was taken back to Kainga by king Khäravela of the Cedi clan. Besides, a nude torso, 22 supposed to be a Jina figure, found at Lohanipur in Patna, has been assigned to the Maurya period. It has been suggested 23 that the worship of images was borrowed from the Brāhmaṇical Hindus first by the Jains and later on by the Buddhists. However, in addition to a number of Mathurā images of the Tirthankaras mentioned above, a few more images, on which the names of the Jinas are not mentioned, were also discovered. The said records, ** except the one 25 dated in the year 113 of the Gupta era, belong to the Kuṣāņa period. Besides, some epigraphs of the Kuṣāṇa age record the dedication of fourfold images (sarvatobhadrikā pratima) of the Jinas.
The practice of setting up āyāgapaṭas for the worship of Arhats is mentioned in the inscriptions."" The word āyāga is
16 Ep. Ind., Vol. I, pp. 390, 395, 397; Vol. II, pp. 199-200, 207. 17 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 383.
18
D. R. Bhandarkar Volume, pp. 282-83; cf. VOJ, Vol. I, pp. 172-73. 19 Ep. Ind., Vol. I, p. 396; Vol. II, p. 199; Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXIII, p. 152.
20 Ep. Ind., Vol. II. pp. 200, 205; Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXIII, p. 108.
21 Sircar, Sel. Ins., Vol. I, 1965, p. 217.
22 JBORS, Vol. XXIII, pp. 130-32.
23 U. P. Shah, op. cit., pp. 39-40.
24 Ibid., Nos. 22, 57, 75. 96; Ep. Ind., Vol. II, p. 204; JUPHS, Vol. XXIII, p. 49.
25 Bhandarkar's List, No. 1268.
26 Lüders' List, Nos. 24-25, 37, 112; Math. Ins., pp. 38-39.
27 Lüders' List, Nos. 94, 100, 103, 105-06.