Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India

Author(s): Pranabananda Jash
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

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Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India
still existing on the Mañchapuri cave in the Udayagiri hill. T.N. Ramachandran describes the panel in the following words:
"The most important scene which arrests our attention in this cave (the Mañchapuri cave) is the central scene on the facade of the verandah. Though unfortunately mutilated, what remains shows a throne with a royal group on the proper left consisting of two men and two women. The first man near the throne is badly mutilated. He is probably the king, by virtue of his proximity to the throne. Behind him stands another royal figure with a tiara resembling the tiara on Mauryan heads found at Sarnath. Let us call him the prince. Behind the prince stand two women of equal status. The first may be taken to be the queen, the next as the princess. Above the king and the prince are two gandharvas hovering in the sky and beating a drum suspended on a pole. ... Above the women adjoining the gandharias there is a representation of a full-blown lotus which has been readily taken by all to represent Sürya. While the attitude of the royal party is to adore whatever was kept on the throne, the flower and the gandlarvas over the party bring out their importance. Shall we take the scene as one in which the king (perhaps Khāravela), the prince (perhaps Kudepasiri) and the queen or princess are doing honour to the image of the Kalinga-Jina which Kháravela recovered from Magadh and restored to his people?''95
If the identification suggested by T.N. Ramachandran is taken for consideration, it would then mean that the royal patronage was extended not only by way of financial assistance, or of excavating caves for the Jaina Mwis alone, but the involvement of the royal personnel actively accelerated and helped the faith to secure a prime and predominate position in the religious history of Orissa just before the closing of the pre-Christian era. The excavation of several rock-cut caves of Udayagiri and Khandagiri hills in Orissa in honour of the Jaina Mini also exhibit adequate reflection of the flourishing condition of this faith.
Fabri's observations on the Jaina caves of Udayagiri and Khandagiri are worth quoting -"The first patently obvious fact that emerges is simply this that the sixty odd caves in these two hills must have taken several hundred years to excavate; they show such a development of styles and even if the occupation was not as long as at Ajanta, where we find a thousand years of artistic activity, Khandagiri and Udayagiri must have taken some 350