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STUDIES IN JAINA ART
(varsasthala) corresponding to the kalasa of the Hindu shrines. The form undergoes stylistic development; at first there is no drum, but later on the circular base becomes a cylinder, and the dome is elevated and elongated, and the base terraces are multiplied. "1
The Chinese pilgrims speak of certain stūpas as towers. The most remarkable monument of Kanişka's reign was possibly his great stūpa near Peshawar which, to sum up the various Chinese accounts, consists of a basement in five stages (150 ft.), a superstructure (stapa) of carved wood in thirteen stories (400 ft.), surmounted by an iron column, with 13 to 25 gilt copper umbrellas (88 ft.), making a total height of 638 ft.
The description of the stupas given above, and the account of Kaniska's Tower just noted will further support the hypothesis regarding the structural resemblance between Ziggurat and stupa. Even the early Yaksa shrines such as the one illustrated in Coomaraswamy's HIIA., fig. 69A (if at all it is a Yaksa shrine and not a memorial shrine) was made after the manner of a Ziggurat, like a mountain or a tower.
The Jaina traditions speak of the first stupa and shrine, erected by Bharata, on the mountain on which Rṣabhanatha obtained the Nirvana. The shrine and the stupas erected, Bharata made eight terraces ( asfa-pada) between the foot and the top of the mountain hence the name aṣṭapada given to the mount. Here also is the underlying conception of the first Jaina shrine being an eight-terraced mountain, an eight-terraced Ziggurat, or an eight-terraced stúpa.
Let us take the Sanchi Stupa I. The outer railing with the processional path is the first terrace, though on ground level, and expressed horizontally. But there is a platform with a railing and a processional path above; and there is the harmika on the top. The stupa thus retains the characteristic of a Ziggurat.
It was possibly because of the fact of Ziggurat being regarded as the prototype of such terraced relic-structures or the elaborate stūpas, that the Mahabharata and Mahābhāṣya referred to them as Jārūkas.
Nebuchadnezzar and his successor Nabonidus are credited with having repaired old Ziggurats. The Ziggurats were standing at least upto 539 B.C. as shown above, and though in ruins, must have stood for a few centuries more. They must have been familiar to Indians whose contacts with Sumerian Civilization and Babylon, from the age of Harappa to that of the Baveru Coomaraswamy, HIIA., p. 30. cf. also, the description of a stupa in the Divyavadana, quoted by Foucher, A., L.' Art Gre'co-bouddhiquie du Gandhara, Vol. I, p. 96.
Coomaraswamy, HIIA., p. 53.
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