Studies in Jaina Art

Author(s): Umakant P Shah
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 17

STUDIES IN JAINA ART
certainly ascribe to their first twenty-two Tirthankaras, a period covering millions of years B.C., but such tales are not acceptable to a modern historian. Neminatha, the twenty-third Jina, was a brother (cousin) of Krsna, but further evidence is necessary before connecting him with any Pre-historic finds. The mutilated red-stone statuette from Harappa1 (Figure 1) assigned to the Chalco. lithic age is surprisingly analogous in style to the Mauryan torso of a Jina figure from Lohanipur, Bihār, (Fig. 2) but has in addition two large circular depressions on shoulder.fronts unlike any Jaina sculpture discovered hitherto. Very probably it represents some ancient Yakşa. However, the close similarity in styles of the two finds, establishes the continuity of Indian art down to the Mauryan age, and at once undermines older conceptions regarding the origin of the Buddha image (and consequently the Jina figure) in Central India from the model supplied by the Indo-Hellenic school of Gandhara.
Mauryan and Sunga Periods
I have elsewhere discussed the tradition of Jivantasvāmi Image worshipped at Vidisă and Vitabhaya-pattana, from ancient works like the Avasyaka Carpi, the Nisitha Carpi and the Vasudevahindi. I have also shown that a sandal-wood portrait sculpture was carved in the life-time of Mahavira when he was meditating in his palace, about a year prior to his renunciation statue came in possession of Uddayana of Sindhu-Sauvira from whom King Pradyota of Ujjain carried it off after depositing an exact wooden copy at Vitabhaya-pattana. The copy was later on burried in a sand-storm which wrought the destruction of the whole city. Kumarapala got it excavated and brought it to Anahilavāḍa-Pätan according to contemporary evidence of the great scholiast and saint Hemacandrācārya.
4
The tradition of Jivantasvāmi images (i. e. images of Mahavira standing in meditation with a crown and ornaments on his person) started with the popularity of the original sandal-wood image carried off by Pradyota and deposited at Vidiša (Bhelsä) in his territory. The existence of this tradition known only from literature was recently supported by the find of a bronze of Jivantasvāmi from Akoță, with an inscription on its pedestal in characters of c. 550 A. D., expressly calling it an image of Jivantasvāmi (Fig. 22). Another bronze of the same iconographic type, more beautiful and older, but with the pedestal lost, is also obtained in this hoard (Figs. 20-21). We have, therefore,
1 Ibid. x. a-d.
Journal of the Oriental Institute, Vol. I, No. 1, pp. 72 ff. and Vol. I, No. 4. pp. 358 ff.
For Sauvira, see, Agrawal V. S., India as Known to Panini, pp. 37.
40, 50.
Shah Umakant P., A Note on the Akola Hoard of Jaina Bronzes, published as Appendix IV in Baroda Through The Ages, pp. 97 ff. esp. see pp. 99-100.