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Jaina Architecture and Images of Western India under ...
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found with other religious faiths too. So their usefulness in ascribing these caves to the Jaina creed must remain dubious. The Svastika here is wrongly defined because its upper horizontal end is toward the left rather than on the right, as the photographs given by Burgess shows. It is also possible that the negative film might have been printed wrongly. If so then Svastika symbol may go on right end instead the left one and there is no problem."2
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Taken as a whole then, the symbols do not conclusively prove that the occupants of Bāvā Pyara caves were Jains.
Now to the Date
Burgess, who was the first to take into account these caves very comprehensively, says nothing about the date of Bävä Pyārā caves, in his book." But later on he discussed the date and mentioned that they belong to an early date in his another famous work. 14 But his very statement of his, is very vague. He does not say how much early the caves were. So he keeps his fingers crossed regarding the date, even approximately.
Sankalia places the date between 200 B.C. and 300 A.D. He thinks that the caves containing Caitygṛha are of the second century B.C. and those with symbols carved may have been carved during the second and third century A.D.IS
This author while examining these caves personally had noticed two Vyāla figures each on both sides at the lower and of a small entrance at the south end of the second row of this group. Both Burgess and Sankalia did not seem to have noticed these significant Vyāla figures, which in point of fact, are a good means for fixing the date of Bāvā Pyara group of caves. M. A. Dhaky dates such western India Vyāla figures to the fourth century A.D." Following this dating
and comparing our Vyāla figures with those he mentions, one may come to the conclusion that these caves must have been carved during the later half of the second century A.D. or we may place them in the first half of the third century A.D. for the simple reason that Vyāla
