306 Note on the defaced Statues of the Jains. [April 



the Pandyan Dynasty of Madura.* What particular deity is designated 

 by Chitraratha Swami, seems doubtful, some consider it a designation 

 of Siva, others of a Jain divinity. 



VII. — Note on the Defaced stale in which the Statues of the Jains are 

 now generally founds as connected wiih the 'persecutions and over' 

 throw of that People.— By Lieut, T. J. Newbold. 



The mutilated state in which the statue presented to the Society, and 

 others surrounding it, were found, bears silent testimony to the ran- 

 corous spirit with which the Brahmins and Jangams persecuted the 

 Jains; and which impelled them, as we are assured on the testimony 

 of many native writers, to wreak their vengeance, unglutted by the over- 

 throw and expulsion of the rival sect, upon their senseless temples and 

 images, and to do their utmost to obliterate every trace of the heretical 

 creed from the face of the earth. In various localities that I have 

 visited in Mysore, the Carnatic, the eastern portion of the Southern 

 Mahratta Country, and the Nizam's territories, the Jaina bastis have 

 been converted into temples consecrated to Mahadeo, the Lingum, &c. 

 The most prominent distinguishing marks of their origin are com» 

 monly obliterated ; but it frequently happens that some small bas-re- 

 liefs of the Jaina Tirf hangars, or of the female effigy canopied by the 

 uplifted trunks of two elephants, have either escaped notice, or been 

 permitted to remain from their insignificance, sufficiently indicative of 

 the religion of the builders. The larger and detached images are either 

 destroyed or disfigured ; and thrown outside the walls of the place. 

 The Brahmins, even at the present day, declare it to be unlucky to 

 look upon the countenance of a Jaina image : consequently the features 

 of the statues have rarely escaped mutilation or destruction. 



At Bagwari in the Southern Mahratta Country, near which place 

 Basava, the celebrated founder of the Jangam sect, and subverter of 

 the Jaina kingdom of Kalyan was born, are many marks of the furi- 

 ous spirit of extermination : the numerous Jaina temples have, with two 

 exceptions, been levelled with the dust, and their remnants, in the 

 shape of broken altars, and elegantly carved pillars, employed in re- 

 pairing the walls of the town. One of the two bastis left standing 

 has been converted into a temple to the apotheosis of the arch prose- 



• Pxin«ep Us, Tab, ii. 131, 



