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JAINA IMAGES
picted naked, and sometimes clad in white. Rşabhanātha, in the alabaster monument under discussion, wears a thin silken robe, covering his hips and legs.
But there is a special problem that arises in Jaina iconography as a result of the drastic purity of the ideal of the Tīrthankara. The sculptor cannot be allowed to damage the sense of his representation by vodilying in any way the perfect isolation and non-particularity of the releascd beings. The pristine life-monads are to be represented without fault. How, then, is the worshiper to distinguish one of these “victors" from another, sincc all--having transcended the sphere of time, change, and specification-are as alike as so many certified eggs? The solution to the difficulty was the simple one of providing every image with an einblem that should refer either to the name or to some distinctive detail of the legend of the Tīrtharkara intended. This is why the statue of Rşabhanātha-literally “Lord (nātha) Bull (rsabha)”-shows a little zebu-bull beneath the savior's feet. The effect of such a juxtaposition is that in dramatic contrast to these accompanying figures, which are ieininiscent of the world and life from which the Tīrthankara has withdrawn, the majestic aloofness of the perfected, balanced, absolutely self-contained figure of the saint becomes emphasized in its triumphant isolation. The image of the released one seems to be neither animate nor inanimate, but pervaded by a strange and timeless calm. It is human in shape and feature, yet
who regard themselves as representing the original Jaina practice and hold that a schism in the year 89 A.D. gave rise to the Digambaras. The evidence of the Grecks, however, speaks for the existence of gymnosophists at least as early as the fourth century B.C., and tends to support the claim of the Digambaras that it is they who have preserved the earlier practice. According to the Diganbara theory of the schism, a sect of lax principles arose under Bhadrabāhu, the eighth successor of Mahavīra, which in 80 A.1). developed into the present community of the Svetāmbajas (cf. Hermann Jacobi, "Digambaras,” in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV, p. 704).
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