  About the Artwork
  
  
  Notice the two figures seated cross-legged in meditation, hands resting in their laps. They are Jinas, spiritually liberated, enlightened beings of the Jain religion. The word “Jina” means “victor” — having conquered all attachments to the material world, they become omniscient, teach others the path to true knowledge, and finally escape the cycle of rebirth.

This sculpture once belonged to the upper part of a doorway within a Jain temple. As the most highly revered beings in Jain belief, only the Jinas are represented within small shrines. On the far left, the goddess Ambika sits on a lion with a child on her knee. She holds a mango branch and is sheltered by the traces of a now-damaged mango tree. The family group between the two Jinas is unidentified, but the presence of children and the fruits held by the parents suggest they were associated with abundance.

In Jain belief, twenty-four Jinas are born during each cycle of cosmic time. Because they have similar iconography — including elongated earlobes, a bump on top of the head signaling their great wisdom, and, in some cases, a diamond-shaped shrivatsa (auspicious endless knot) on the chest — individual Jinas can be difficult to distinguish. It is possible that one of the Jinas depicted in this sculpture is Neminatha, the twenty-second Jina, since Ambika is one of his attendant deities. However, Ambika is also worshiped independently, as a goddess associated with prosperity, protection, and childbirth.
  
  
  Title
  Jinas with Family and Goddess Ambika
  
  
  Artwork Date
  950-1050
  
  Artist
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  Life Dates
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  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  Indian
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Sandstone
  
  
  Dimensions
  Overall: 12 1/4 × 33 × 5 3/4 inches (31.1 × 83.8 × 14.6 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Sculpture
  
  
  Department
  Asian Art
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Sarah Bacon Hill Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  43.39
  
  
  Copyright
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