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STUDIES IN JAINA ART
Four-cornered (is the sepulcbral mound). Now the Devas and the Asuras, both of them sprung up from Prajapati, were contending in the (four) regions ( quarters). The gods drove out the Asuras, their rivals and enemies, from the regions, and, being regionless, they were overcome, wherefore, the people who are godly make their burial places four-cornered, whilst those who are of the Asura nature, the Easterners and others (make them ) cound, for they (the gods ) drove them out from the regions.” (Satapatha Brahmaņa, translated by Julius Eggling in Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 44, pp. 421, 424).
It is, therefore, quite reasonable to expect the stūpas of the heterodox Buddhist and Jaina sects both of which originated in the land of the "Āsuryah Pracyāh" of the Satapatha, as being round in plan. The Daiva or Brahmanical funeral relics should be square in plan. Most of the Buddhist stūpas are round while the Hindus even today raise small square terraced structures (with or without a tulasi-plant grown on top) over the ashes of the followers of the Brahmanical cult.
A later word, synonymous with a funeral relic structure or stūpa, is Aidūka, explained by the author of Amarakośa and Hemacandra as one having, inside it, a bone-relic.
Now the Mahābhārata, Vanaparva, 190.65 and 67 says that " The men in the decadent age of Kali will forsake their own gods and worship the edakas (65) and the earth will be dotted over with edūka monuments in place of temples of gods (67). Obviously, the text here refers to stūpas (Aidūkas) of the non-Brahmanical cults.
According to a variant reading from the Southern Recension, recorded in the Critical Edition of the MBH., the reading is jäluka in place of eduka. Dr. Agrawala 1 has shown that this jālūka or jārūka was obviously derived from the Ziggurat. As shown by him, edūka or elüka was a later indigenous substitute for the original jārūka. He further quotes the Mahābhāşya of Patañjali (commenting on Pāņini, V. 3.101 ) which refers to jārukāh ślokāh, meaning verses pertaining to järūka (ie. Stúpa) worship, such as are found in the Saddharmapundarika and other works.
That the jārūka or edúka (Aidūka ) was a terraced structure is further proved by him from a reference to Vişnudharmottara Purāņa, HII. Ixxxiv. 1-4, which makes it a terraced temple in three tiers (bhadra pithas) with a Sivalinga installed on its top. He writes: "As a matter of fact an actual specimen of the edūka monument having three terraces and a Siva-linga at its top has been unearthed at Ahicchatrā.... But the traditional structure was certainly
1 Agrawala, V.S., Some Foreign Words in Ancient Sanskrit Literature, J.U.P.H.S., Vol. XXIII (1950), pp. 150-151.
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