Studies in Jaina Art

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

Page 29

STUDIES IN JAINA ART
Jhansi District, Madhya Bharat, there are a number of loose sculptures near temple 12 (some of which were being fixed in the compound wall when this writer visited the site). A few images in this group seem to go back to the end of the Gupta period. The site of Budhi Chanderi in the same district is equally promising. Architecture and sculptures from both the sites deserve special studies.
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One of the most exquisite Jaina bronzes had recently been discovered from Akoță, near Baroda in Western India (Bombay State). It is a standing image of Rsabhanatha with pedestal lost and badly mutilated at the back, hands and legs (fig. 19). Its importance as the earliest known Jina image with a dhoti is discussed by me separately in the Bulletin of the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, Vol. I, No. 1. Its value as a specimen of the art of Gupta Age is no less, the head offers an excellent study of a Yogi in the dhyana mudia, with eyes half closed and shining with the light of supreme knowledge. In the proportionate modelling of the torso and the legs, this bronze, though smaller in size, is superior to the Sultanganj Buddha. It should be assigned to c. 450 A. D.
Transitional Period
The transitional period from Gupta art to the provincial schools of art witnessed a remarkable revival and growth of Tantric practices in Brahmanism, Buddhism as well as Jainism. Pantheons and rituals rapidly multiplied, resulting in new varieties of icons and temples dedicated to them. The artist had a wider range of subject matter but the growth of rigid canonical injunctions gradually made art productions of the medieval period lifeless and mechanical. The transitional period from about 600 to 1000 A. D. is, therefore, very important in the history of Indian art and culture. It has besides produced some of the most well-known specimens of Indian art in architecture, sculpture and painting.
Five bronzes from Valabhi, illustrated in fig. 29, belong to c. sixth century A. D. Of this age, probably the earliest known dated specimen is a standing bronze figure (fig. 30) from Vasantagadh, old Sirohi State, Western India, with an inscription on its pedestal giving the date Samvat 744 (657) A.D.) Another similar bronze without inscription and a few smaller ones from
1 First discovered by Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar, discussed by this writer in Bulletin of the Prince of Wales Museum, no. 1, p. 36.
2 The Jaina Bronzes from the Vasantagadh Hoard are discussed in a separate paper (with plates; by Shah, U. P., in the forthcoming first number of the Lalita-Kala, being published by the Lalita-Kala Academy, India.
Muni Kalyāpavijaya in Nagari Pracāriņi Patrika, new series, 18.2. pp. 221-31. The inscription records the name of the sculptor Sivanaga and says. that the second (standing) bronze (of Adinatha) was also cast by him. These