Researches on Jainism in Ancient Bengal

In the eastern part of the Indian sub-continent, the territory of ancient Bengal is a potential zone for the study of the growth and development of Jainism. Several attempts have been made to study the historicity of Jainism and its impacts and relevance in the Indian society and regional studies on Jainism have also been carried out in several parts of India. A region-based research on Jainism with respect to ancient Bengal is also a desideratum. Some books have been written by historians on Buddhism in ancient Bengal; however, it is very unfortunate that no such interest has been forthcoming with respect to Jainism in Bengal though, the influence of the Jainism in the formation of the Bengali culture was more significant than that of the Buddhism.

It was possibly in 1937 that the first article on Jainism in Bengal was written by Pramode Lal Paul (1937). Two years later, Kalyan Kumar Ganguli also wrote on the same subject (Ganguli, 1939). Both the scholars were of the opinion that Jainism was popular in ancient Bengal even during the preChristian eras and that it was dominant religion up to the seventh century CE. They thought that the earliest civilizing force in ancient Bengal was that of the Jainas, who penetrated into ancient Bengal during the pre-Christian days when Buddhism did not make much head-way in this region. However, after some discoveries of Jain images from different parts of ancient Bengal, K.K. Ganguli realized and mentioned in one of his articles (1984) that Jainism survived in ancient Bengal up to the nine-ten century CE.

Besides these were the first tentative academic endeavours to highlight the presence of Jainism in ancient Bengal, there were some earlier attempts from where we can understand about the presence of Jainism in ancient Bengal. Some Britishers likes Col. E.T. Delton (1866), J.D. Beglar (1878), W.W. Hunter (1877), T. Bloch (1903), H. Coupland (1911) and among Indians A. Sastri (1918) visited the famous Jain site Chharra in Purulia district of West Bengal and in their reports mentioned about the Jain remains from ancient Bengal. These reports were only documentations about the Jain remains found from different sites. Later on K. Dutta in his three elaborate articles (1929, 1930, 1934, 1961 and 1964) on archaeological remains from Sundarban documented and mentioned about the Jain images from the coastal Bengal area. R.D. Banerji in his monumental work Eastern Indian School of Medieval Sculptures (1933) also highlighted about the Jain art heritage from ancient Bengal especially from Purulia district. However, when B.C. Bhattacharyya wrote his pioneering work on Jain Iconography (1939), however, he did not pay any attention to Jain icons from Bengal and not a single illustration of his book came from this region.

The first volume of the History of Bengal which was published by the Dacca University as early as in 1943, under the editorship of R.C. Majumdar, was the first comprehensive regional history. This had included a chapter on Jain religion and iconography. However, due to lack of discoveries of Jain images from ancient Bengal the information which he represents in this volume is not comprehensive and it is also not speak much about the Jainism in ancient Bengal. Niharranjan Ray in his Bāṅgālīr Itihās (in Bengali 1949/2001) an attempt had been made to uncover such roots of Jainism in ancient Bengal. In this work it was established that what is known as the Aryan or Brahmanical was nothing but the visible portion of a huge iceberg, the invisible portion being ninety percent of the whole thing. Diversities of cultural complexes have been interwoven in the invisible portion from different sources, in which Jainism had also its due role to play.

Inspired by this alternative approach, Binay Ghosh wrote famous Paśchim-Baṅger-Saṃskṛti. He had travelled in the remotest villages to find what the persons concerned had to say about their own religious beliefs and practices. In his book, we find the real extent of Jain influence on the religious life of rural Bengal, its actual functional role and obviously the detail documentations of Jain sculptural remains which were scattered in the length and breadth of ancient Bengal.

In 1949 P.C. Bagchi published his article on beginning of Jainism in ancient Bengal in Bengali and he discussed about how Jainism penetrated in ancient Bengal based on the literary sources as well as some inscriptional evidences. He believed that the Nirgrantha sects were well established in different parts of Bengal from 3^rd century BCE up to seventh century CE. With the help of recent discoveries we know that Jainism did not disappear from Bengal after the seventh century CE and that it flourished with real grandeur in Rāḍha up to the twelfth-thirteenth century CE. A re-appraisal of the whole situation has become a desideratum.

Subsequently Adris Banerji visited one of the famous Jain site Pakbirra, in Purulia district and documented a few sculptural specimens. It is very unfortunate that no definite information about the site is available from his report (Banerji 1942) though his discoveries show that Jainism was very popular in ancient Bengal during the early medieval period.

After Indian independence the study of Jainism in ancient Bengal get some new light. Different Indian as well as some foreign scholars started working on this subject though only the discoveries of Jain sculptural and architectural remains were reported. Among such researches D. Mitra published an article on Some Jain Antiquities from Bankura, West Bengal in 1958. She tried to focus some magnificent Jain images among the scholarly world because Jain images are generally considered to be very rare in this region.

Jain Bhawan of Kolkata started publishing a journal known as Jain Journal from 1966 onwards under the editorial-ship of Ganesh Lalwani. Different well known scholars published their articles on different volumes of this journal. All these papers are mainly based on the several discoveries of Jain sculptural as well as architectural remains from different parts of ancient Bengal and from these researches we may assume that Jainism strongly survived in the ancient Bengal up-to 12^th -13^th century and the western part of Bengal was the core area of Jainism.

In 1975 A. Ghosh edited three monumental volumes entitle Jain Art and Architecture (1975) . In these volumes different well known scholars of India contributed their articles. All these articles chronologically elaborate the Jain antiquities (both sculptures and architecture) from different parts of India. Jain antiquities from ancient Bengal were also discussed in these volumes along with Bihar and Orissa. We can get a clear idea about the beginning of Jain art in eastern India and how this art tradition gradually developed.

Jain iconography has become an important branch of study during the end of twentieth century and several books on Jain iconography were published. In the study of Jain iconography Jain images from ancient Bengal also received attention and U.P. Shah's Jain Rupamandana, a book of iconography, contains several plates representing Jain images from ancient Bengal (Saha, 1987).

Dilip K. Chakrabarti made a study of Jain antiquities of Purulia (1987A: 351-7; 1987B: 56-68). As the district did not witness any significant development of the protohistoric and early historic stage Chakrabarti suggested that the Jains during the 'medieval' period penetrated an area which was still essentially 'prehistoric' in its cultural character. He was reporting a number of archaeological sites and various Tīrthaṅkara as well as other Jain deities from these sites. Chitrarekha Gupta has made a significant contribution on Jain researches in India as well as Bengal, though her work is not quite comprehensive (2001). Later on D. M. Dutta works entitled A Survey of Jainism and Jain Art of Eastern India (2004) includes not only the art and iconography of Jain images but she also tried to find out the infrastructure of Jain history in eastern India in general and West Bengal in particular. She mainly incorporated very brief iconographic details of some Jain images mainly housed in the different museums of eastern India. Temple activities as well as the nature of archaeological sites/settlements or “find spots” associated with Jainism are not elaborately mentioned in her work. Moreover several scholars investigated various aspects associated with Jain art especially the iconographic study of Jain images of ancient Bengal. Among them the works of Gerd J.R. Mevissen is noteworthy (2000: 343-400; 2001: 9-20; 2003: 439530; 2008: 439-52). In 2010 Rupendra Kumar Chattopadhyay published a monumental work on archaeology of the Bankura district. The early medieval section of this book widely elaborates about the extensive Jain heritage of this district including the art and iconography of Jain images and also the structural remains. In the recent years some articles are published which highlighted the scattered Jain antiquities along the different river valleys of Purulia and Bankura districts to trace the spread of Jainism in the fringe areas of Chhotanagpur plateau (Chattopadhyaya, Ray & Majumder 2011-12-201213: 119-52; Ray, Chattopadhyay & Majumder 2015: 205-36).

The above courses of history related to the study of Jainism certainly provide a general idea regarding the various aspects of Jainism as a whole or in general. More especially the study of Jainism in ancient Bengal or eastern India also give us a broad outline about the discovery of Jain antiquities and the intellectual tradition of the Jain doctrine and philosophy.