श्री स्वप्नादेव केशरिया पार्श्वनाथ मंदिर का इतिहास

स्वप्नदेव

THE DREAM GOD BY C. MIDDLETON-STEUWART

In this article, the story is told of the rise of a Jain Temple which promised to be one of the most remarkable Buildings of its kind in India. It was erected around the site of the Statue of Parasnath discovered a dozen years ago-a spot which tradition carries back to the creation. And someday it may be the principal pilgrimage center in India as well as in the Central Provinces.

Found by a Bishop of the church, and traced through a drawn by the brother of a Marwari Cotton Broker, Parasnath once again gazes inscrutably before him, whilst around him, and on the site of his ancient shrine, is arising a temple, towards the magnificence and adornment of which the wealth of the Jain Community of India is being poured out with lavish hand.

For centuries he slept amidst the dust and ruins of forgotten fanes in ancient Bhadravati bowing before the edicts of Ashok, he surrendered to the call of the Gautama, and mother Earth, who first bared her bosom for the old beliefs, mercifully took into her shrouded embrace the neglected image.

The God which thousands of years before had seen that fierce conflict of the Mahabaric heroes for the possession of the Shyam Karna steed, to its doctrine of meekness, prepared for slumber, Iulled by the distant chanting of monks in their rock-hewn cells.

And Parasnath biding his time, slept.

Today, if those pious monks of Asoka’s time, could revisit the scene, they would find the silence of desolation and the jungle where once their monasteries stood. They would see the blackness of a thousand nights concealing the seated Budha in the caves of Wijasan-bis only attendants of the bat.  

Gone was the great city of their day; gone were the Sangharams and colleges of their learning. But the temple of Parasnath, ruined though it be, still stands. Parasnath despised, neglected, and forgotten then, stirs in his sleep now, and from the hushed gloom of his ruined abode comes the clang of the bell and the mystic murmur of the Sanskrit Mantras.

To this day, the jungle and open spaces under cultivation yield to the plow, interesting relics of a bygone civilization. It was in some such fortuitions way that the head of the Scottish Mission in Chanda discovered the statue of Parasnath. It lay in a tangle of weeds half buried in the earth but partially protected by the trampled-down remains of an old temple. It was removed and placed in a shed and declared a protected monument by the Government.

The Times of India Illustrated Weekly, July 6th, 1924.