Bahubali

The narrative

Bahubali and his brother Bharata, both sons of Rishabhanatha, are said to have disputed the succession after their father's renunciation. To spare their armies, they agreed to settle it by personal contest. Bahubali won, and at the moment of victory understood the emptiness of what he had been fighting for, and renounced on the spot.

He then stood in meditation for so long, the tradition holds, that vines grew up his legs and anthills formed at his feet. He nonetheless failed to attain omniscience, because a trace of pride in his victory remained; only when Bharata came to him and he set that pride aside did knowledge follow. The narrative is didactic in a way unusual for the tradition, turning on a subtle rather than a gross attachment.

The images

Bahubali is the subject of the most conspicuous sculpture in the Jain world. The colossus at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka, some seventeen metres high, was raised in the late tenth century under the Ganga minister Chavundaraya, and is carved from a single block of granite on a hilltop. Further colossi at Karkala, Venur and Dharmasthala repeat the type on a smaller scale.

The images show him standing upright in the kayotsarga posture, arms held away from the body, with creepers twining about his limbs — the one iconographic detail that identifies him. The twelve-yearly anointing of the Shravanabelagola image, the Mahamastakabhisheka, is the largest Jain public ceremony.