Risabha Deva

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

Page 88

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RISHABHA DEVA
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a national asset of the Kalinga people and was taken away to Magadha by a Nanda King. 17 This shows that the tradition of Rishabhadeva is ancient than the Nanda period 18 The religious votaries of the times of Buddha and Mahavira, no doubt, regarded Rishabha as a real person and worshipped his images.
Again the images of Jaina deities, bearing inscriptions dedicated to Rishabva in the Curzon Museum Muttra also prove this very thing. 19 There were images of Jinas engraved on the plane of a Stupa which was regarded, in the Indo-Scythian period to be the work of Devas, which Profs. Bulher and Smith assigned to the time of Parsvanatha, i. e., 8th. Century B. C. 20 This evidence pushes back the Jaina tradition of 24 Tirthankaras including Rishabhadeva far anterior to the Nanda Kings and Mahabira's time. Now, if Rishabha was not a real personage there is no reason to believe that the people of ancient India should make and worship his images and dedicate inscriptions to him.
We, therefore, regard Rishabha as a real personage and founder of Jainism in this cycie of time.
17. Journal of the Behar and Orissa Res: Society, Vol. III pp. 465-467.
18. MM. K. P. Jayaswal remarks; "Before the time of Kharvela there were temples of Arhats on the Udyagiri Hills., JBORS III. p. 47.
19. The Jaina stupa and other antiquities of Muttra. 20. Ibid.