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Updated: May 28, 2025
Venerable crows, vultures, buzzards, and other bipeds, most of them with their plumage gone, pass the remainder of their lives in peace in this curious retreat. At the end of the enclosure a heron proudly strutted about with a wooden leg, among lame hens and blind geese and ducks. Rats, mice, sparrows, and jackals have an asylum in the Jain hospital.
I do not really know exactly why, but the great tower, whose fluted shaft, dark red in the sunglow, shoots up some 270 feet into the air, did not appeal to me. It is like no other column it is unique, marvellous, but it leaves me cold. The splendid arch of the screen of the old temple, and the lovely columns of the Jain temple opposite, attracted me far more than the Kutab Minar.
The first is represented by a group of three manuscripts two of them dated respectively 1598 and 1610 and consisting of the tenth book of the Bhagavata Purana, the third being yet another illustration of the Gita Govinda . All three sets of illustrations are in a closely similar style a style which, while possessing roots in Jain painting is now considerably laxer and more sprawling.
No passage has yet been adduced from the suttas mentioning more than seven Buddhas but later books, such as the Buddha-vaṃsa and the introduction to the Jâtaka, describe twenty-five . There are twenty-four Jain Tîrthankaras and according to some accounts twenty-four incarnations of Vishnu. Probably all these lists are based on some calculation as to the proper allowance of saints for an aeon.
It also counts Kapila and Ṛishabha, apparently identical with the founder of the Sânkhya and the first Jain saint, as incarnations. The Padma Purâṇa seems to ascribe not only Buddhism but the Mâyâ doctrine of Śankara to delusions deliberately inspired by gods. I have not been able to find the passage in the printed edition of the Purâṇa but it is quoted in Sanskrit by Aufrecht, Cat. Cod. Bib.
Between 1450 and 1575, Western Indian painting continued to focus on Jain themes, adulterated to only a very slight extent by subjects drawn from poetry. It is possible that the Krishna story was also illustrated, but no examples have survived; and it is not until the very end of the sixteenth century that the Krishna theme again appears in painting and then in two distinct forms.
The minister, having thus explained his sentiments to the rajah, converted him to the Jain religion, so that he did whatever the minister said, and no longer paid any respect to Brahmins, Fukeers, Jogies, Dervishes, &c., and carried on his government according to this religion."
All three are illustrated in the prevailing Jain style with its spiky angular idioms and all three have the same somewhat sinister air of barbarous frenzy.
But are we to believe that the stories, true or romantic, originally told of Gotama were transferred to his mythical forerunners or that before his birth there was a Buddha legend to which the account of his career was accommodated? Probably both processes went on simultaneously. The notices of the Jain saints show that there must have been such legends and traditions independent of Gotama.
According to Jain tradition there was a severe famine in northern India about 200 years after Mahâvîra's death and the patriarch Bhadrabâhu led a band of the faithful to the south . In the seventh century A.D. we know from various records of the reign of Harsha and from the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Chuang that it was nourishing in Vaiśâlî and Bengal and also as far south as Conjeevaram.
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