1849.] discovered on a Spur of the Satpoorah Range. 941 



whatever other Tirthankara is represented, being without a fringe to the 

 canopy, denoting an inferiority and apparent subordination to the great 

 figure, which, as Mahavira succeeded Parswinath, would not be likely. 

 I am free to confess however that the subordinate nature of these is 

 but a conjecture of my own, but I may safely class with the same date 

 and period, the temple itself and the figures in the recess, though not 

 those inside either the temple or choultry.* Of the date of the temple 

 I shall have occasion to speak presently. The seated figures on the 

 tablets in the recess of the court wall, accompanied by the almost inva- 

 riable emblem of the lion, would point to Mahavira, the only Digam- 

 bara-Tirthankara known, and several reasons of weight conduce to his 

 coincidence with the rock image ; — 1st, the precision of his era, which 

 unlike Rishabha is not disputable, — the likelihood of Rishabha's being 

 little more than the first ascetic, not the extensive promulgation of the 

 faith ; the inscription on the small temple Vardhamana Rakshasa, the 

 worship of the Prapatha or Paduka, — almost exclusively his own, both 

 in the large temple and at the foot of a statue identical with the small 

 figures opposite the colossus. If heights can be trusted, and are not 

 as frivolous and exaggerated as dates, and we proceed in the ratio of 

 decrease, which the Tirthankaras are made to do, viz. from Rishabha to 

 Sitala, by 50 poles, Sitala to Ananta by 10, and Ananta to Nemi, the 



* The only support to my supposition ragarding the inferiority of the small 

 figures is the very slight one of the name by which two of them are at present known 

 — " Oodura" and " Doodura" and here again the common appellation of figures 

 may tend to establish a clue from which more positive data may yet be arrived 

 at. After hunting over many lists for those names I fell in with one in Vol. IX. A. 

 Res. received from Charucirti Acharya, the Jain chief pontiff at Belegula. It would 

 appear that according to the Jain belief there were born other 24 Tirthankaras in 

 the world during the first age, beside the 24 after Rishabha. Among the names of 

 these Tirthankaras of the Antacala or past times, stand Odara, the 8th, and in a note 

 of Mr. Colebrooke's, a corresponding list is given by Hemachandra Acharya, the 

 author of the Abhidhana Chintamini in which the 8th is called Damodara, a name to 

 this day used frequently as a first name by the Sarawaks, though claimed as usual 

 and applied by Brahmins to Vishnu. Unfortunately this coincidence of name has not 

 as yet led to any date, but there doubtless is one credible and substantial and much 

 less apocryphal than the Treta Yug, and connected with some Sadhu or Guru, for 

 the Jains pay a respectful adoration to those who obtained Moksha in times of anti- 

 quity, even more assiduously and with greater veneration than to the Tirthankaras 

 who were incarnate in the Utsarpioi period. 



6 F 



