284 SKETCH OF THE 



the fact resting on the oral testimony of the head Pontiff at Belli- 

 gola: even, if it be legible on the face of the rock, it is of questionable 

 authenticity, as it is perfectly solitary, and no other document of like 

 antiquity has been met with. 



The Mackenzie Collection contains many hundred Jam inscriptions. 

 Of these, the oldest record grants made by the princes of Homchi, a pet- 

 ty state in Mysur. None of them are older than the end of the ninth 

 century. Similar grants, extending through the eleventh and twelfth 

 centuries by the Velala sovereigns of Mysur, are also numerous, whilst 

 they continue with equal frequency to the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 

 turies, during the existence of the sovereignty of Vijayanagar. Again, at 

 Ahu, under the patronage of the Guzerat princes, we have a number of Jain 

 inscriptions, but the oldest of them bears date Samvat 1245, (A.D. 1189) ;* 

 they multiply in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and are found 

 as late as the middle of the eighteenth — and, finally, in Magadha, the 

 scene of Verddhamana's birth and apotheosis, the oldest inscriptions 

 found, date no further back than the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury.! 



From all credible testimony, therefore, it is impossible to avoid the 

 inference that the Jains are a sect of comparatively recent institution, who 

 first came into power and patronage about the eighth and ninth century : 

 they probably existed before that date as a division of the JBauddhas, and 

 owed their elevation to the suppression of that form of faith to which 



* Asiatic Researches, Vol. XVI. Page 317. 



f Dr. Hamilton's Description of Jain Temples in Behar. — Trans. JR. A. S. I. 525. To 

 these may be added the inscriptions at Parsioanatfi, and a number of inscriptions at Gwalior, 

 copies of which were sent to Mr. Fraser, and which are all dated in the middle of the 15th 

 century. 



