heritage/kankali-tila-mathura.jpg · 1200×800Kankali Tila is a low mound on the south-western edge of Mathura, named after a temple of the goddess Kankali that later stood on it. Roughly 500 feet long and 350 feet broad, it was dug into again and again in the nineteenth century — by Alexander Cunningham in 1871 and 1881–82, by F. S. Growse in 1875, and by Burgess and A. A. Führer between 1887 and 1896. Führer uncovered the buried Jain stupa in 1890–91.
An inscription of the year 79 (about 157 CE) calls the stupa devanirmita, 'built by the gods' — meaning that by Kushan times nobody remembered who had raised it, and it was already thought immeasurably old. Tablets of homage (ayagapatas) were set up around it; one dedicated by Vasu, daughter of the courtesan Lavana Sobhika, actually shows a stupa, and a Parshvanatha tablet belongs to about 15 CE, the time of the Northern Satrap Sodasa.
Hundreds of sculptures came out of the mound: seated and standing Tirthankaras, four-fold (sarvatobhadrika) images, pillars, railings and the yakshi Ambika. Many carry dated donative inscriptions — in the reign of Kanishka (years 5 and 7) and of later kings, one as late as Samvat 1134 (1077 CE) — so Jain worship went on here for some fourteen centuries. The Tirthankaras are shown unclothed. The finds are now in the Government Museum, Mathura, and the State Museum, Lucknow.
