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THE ORIENT
obtained from Kankalı Tula, Mathura. The inscription on the pedestal suggests that the image date from the Kushana period and is possibly not later than the second century AD. But a relief panel from the same site, now in the State Museum Lucknow, showing a scene identified as that of the Dance of Nılanjana and renunciation of Risabhanatha, is clearly assignable to the Sunga period, second rentury BC.
The caves at Udayagiri and Khandagiri, in Orissa, are supposed to belong to the Jaina faith Kharavela, are insciiption is found in the Hathi Gumpha cave (Fig. 6), and the inscriptions of his queen and prince, show that the donos followed Jainism Kharavela's inscription has been assigned to the second or first century BC by various scholars A cavo inscription from Pabhosa, near Kausambı, Allahabad district, refers to King Bahasatimitra and the excavation of the cave fo: Kasyapıya Arhats Since Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara, belonged to the Kasyapagotra, the cave can be safels regarded as excavated for use by Jaina monks, in second century BČ It is interesting to note that inside the cave, on the southern side, is a stone bed with pillow for the monks to rest
This practice of carying stone bed with pillow for Jaina monks living in rock-cut caves and natural caverns is also discovered from various sites in Tamil Nadu Scattered all over the Tamil country such natural caverns with stone beds and
ascribed in early Brahmi characters and Tamil language, are found at several spots on the Eastern Ghats, particularly in the region around Madurai The dates of these inscriptions vary from c second century BC to c third century AD, the earliest inscription being perhaps the one from Manguiam
It is presumed that the Jainas reached this area from the Karnataka region through the hills of the Kongu country (Coimbatore area), the region west of Tiruchirappallı, further south to Pudukottai and then to the hills of Madurai However, this belief rests on the general, but relatively late, accounts of Chandragupta Maurya and Acharya Bhadrabahu, migrating to Sravana Belgola from the north in the early third century BC The earliest reliable archaeological source for this belief is an insciiption at Sravana Belgola, which, as this writer has shown elsewhere, clearly shows that it was not the Srutakevalı Bhadrabahu-I, but another later Bhadrabahu, and the inscription itself gives names of some of the Jaina acharyas who flourished between the two Bhadrabahus So it is not impossible that this earlier evidence of Jaina monks in Tamil Nadu was due, perhaps, to infiltiation from Pratisthanapur, either during the region of Sampratı the grandson of Ashoka (as the Brze hatkalpa-bhasya suggests) or during the rule of some early Satavahana rulers who had Jaina leanings There is no archaeological evidence of Jainism in Karnataka, so far discovered,
