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God : The Jaina View and Jaina Religious Images
Patna District, and is now preserved in the Patna museum. The nudity and the Kiyutsarga-mudrā, suggesting rigorous austerity, are confined only to the Jaina religion, as already stated above.1 This is the earliest religious, image in the Indian religions as well. This torso however may be compared with that of Indus-valley torso.
The excavation at Ayodhya in Faizabad District has yielded a terracotta figure of c. third century B. C., which is taken to be the earliest Jaina terracotta figure so far excavated in India."
The Lohānipur Tirthankara images of the Mauryan age show that in all probability Jainism had the lead in carving the cult images for veneration over Buddhism and Brahmanism; no image of Buddha or any Brahmanical deity of that antiquity has been found. In the history of Jaina religious images, the reference to the Kalinga Jaina image in the Hátbigumphā inscription of Khāravela (c. Ist century B. C.) is of special significance. The inscription mentions that the Kalinga Jaina, once taken away by the Nandrāja from Kalinga, was brought back by Khāravela. 4 The Hāthigumphā, Rānigumphā and other caves on the Udaigiri and Khaņdagiri hills in Orissa (c. 2nd century B. C) are not only important for the inscriptions, but also for religious depictions therein also which help to reveal the traditional history of Jainism, and perhaps also to understand the details of the Indusvalley seals referred to above.
When we look into the development of Jaina religious images, we find that the Jaina art has its own colour. While the gods and goddess in the other religions of India show supernatural representation, the Jaina images are represented purely in the human form. Though the Taina Art in general cannot and should not be isolated from the main stream of Indian art, even the differences between the Jaina, Brahmani
1. Jayaswal, K. P., Jaina Images of Maurya Period', Jour. Bihar,
Orissa Res. Society, Vol. XXIII, Pt. I, 1937, pp. 130-32. 2. Lal B. B. and Srivastava, S. K., 'Perhaps the Earliest Jaina
Terracotta so far excavated in India', Madhu (Recent Researches
in Indian Archaeology and Art History), pp. 329-31. 3. Ghosh, A., op. cit., p. 3. 4. Sircar, D. C., Selected Inscriptions, Vol. 1, Calcutta, 1965,
pp. 213-21. 5. Jain, H. L., op. cit., pp. 307-8.
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