Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/86

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Aflhuith. The first of these and founder of the sect was Adinath, also This Jena was called Rishabhaniith, also Adisarji-dwal and Eikhabdeo. Jbirieeu times incarnate, the last time in the family of Ikshwaku of his father's name being iiie Solar race, when he was born at Ajodhya, He died at Mount Abu, where the oldest Niibi, and his mother's, Miru. tomple is dedicated to him, A. D. 960. The Jains, according to Ward (recent edition), allege that they formerly extended over the whole of Arya and Bharatha-Khanda, and that all those who had any just pretensions to be of Chhattri descent were of their sect, and on the same authority Rishabha, another name for the same hierarch, was the head of this atheistical sect.

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AjUndth, &c. Ajitnath, the second son of these Jenas, Abhinandanansith, the fourth, and Sumantnath, the fifth, were all born at Ajodhya, and died at Parasnath. Chajadraprabha, the eighth, was born at Chandripur, the local name of Sahet Mahet (Bahraich), and died also at Parasndth, as did Anantanath, the fourteenth, born at Ajodhya. Temples now exist at Ajodhya, dedicated to the five hierarchs born there, of which details will be given further on).

Ajodhya had much to do with the propagation of and the Chinese travellers found that faith, or its sister Buddhism, rampant there in the sixth century, as it was across the river at Sahet Mahet, the great Oudh-Buddhist capital. It is clear, then, that

the Jain- Atheist

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Pre-MuhaTnmadan Jain Templet—A. great Jain mandir is known to have existed at Ajodhya, when the Muhammadans conquered Oudh, on the spot now known as Shah Juran's tila, or mound. (See the account of Adinath's temple further on).

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Antique Jain Images. ^I have now in my possession two elaborately carved stone images, discovered some years ago on the banks of the Gumti, in the village of Patna, in pargana Aldemau, Sultanpur district, of which General Cunningham to whom I sent a photograph, writes as fol" I beg also to thank you for the photograph of the two statues, lows which is particularly valuable to me, from the very perfect state of preservation of the figures. They are not, however, Buddhist, but Jain figures. No Buddhist figures are ever represented as naked, and it is only the statues of the Digambar sect of Jains that are so represented. Both figures represent the same hierarch, vis., Adinath, who is the first of the twenty-four Tirthanlcdrs of the Jains. Adindth is known by the wheel on the pedestal, which is represented end on, instead of sideways, as in many other sculptures."

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These statues were discovered under ground by some Bairagis about the year 1850 A. D., who had their discovery widely proclaimed by beat of drum, setting forth that Jaganndth had appeared to them in a dream and had indicated to them where he lay concealed in the ground and that if he were released and set up in the neighbourhood, the necessity for long pilgrimages to the distant Pooree Would cease. They found him at the spot indicated, had him set up as ordered, and now proclaimed the fact for the benefit of pilgrims at large. For one