Jain stupa

Jain stupa
Jain votive plaque with Jain stupa, the "Vasu Śilāpaṭa" ayagapata, 1st century CE, excavated from Kankali Tila, Mathura.[1]
The inscription reads:
"Adoration to the Arhat Vardhamana. The daughter of the matron (?) courtesan Lonasobhika (Lavanasobhika), the disciple of the ascetics, the junior (?) courtesan Vasu has erected a shrine of the Arhat, a hall of homage (ayagasabha), cistern and a stone slab at the sanctuary of the Nirgrantha Arhats, together with her mother, her daughter, her son and her whole household in honour of the Arhats."[2]
Sivayasa Ayagapata, with stupa fragment, Kankali Tila, 75-100 CE.

The Jain stupa was a type of stupa erected by the Jains for devotional purposes. A Jain stupa dated to the 1st century BCE-1st century CE was excavated at Mathura in the 19th century, in the Kankali Tila mound.[3]

Jain legends state that the earliest Jain stupa was built in the 8th century BCE, before the time of the Jina Parsvanatha.[4]

There is a possibly that the Jains adopted stupa worships from the Buddhists, but that is an unsettled point.[5] However the Jain stupa has a peculiar cylindrical three-tier structure, which is quite reminiscent of the Samavasarana, by which it was apparently ultimately replaced as an object of worship.[6] The name for stupa as used in Jain inscriptions is the standard word "thupe".[6]

  1. ^ Quintanilla, Sonya Rhie (2000). "Āyāgapaṭas: Characteristics, Symbolism, and Chronology". Artibus Asiae. 60 (1): 79–137 Fig.26. doi:10.2307/3249941. ISSN 0004-3648. JSTOR 3249941.
  2. ^ "Collections-Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds". vmis.in.
  3. ^ Smith, Vincent Arthur (1901). The Jain stûpa and other antiquities of Mathurâ. Allahabad: KFrank Luker, Superintendent, Government Press, North-Western Provinces and Oudh.
  4. ^ "According to one legend, the earliest Jain stupa (a funerary or reliquary mound, usually grandly ornamented and enclosed by a railing with an elaborate gateway) was built before the time of the Jina Parsvanatha in the eighth century B.C." in Arts of Asia. 1994.
  5. ^ Sethia, Tara (2004). Ahimsā, Anekānta, and Jaininsm. Motilal Banarsidass Publ. p. 200. ISBN 978-81-208-2036-4.
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference UPS16 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).