Vardhamana,
also of the dedication of seats for the teachers, a cistern, and a stone
table. The little temple, it says, stood beside the temple of the guild of
tradesmen, and this remark proves, that Mathura, which, according to the
tradition of the Jainas, was one of the chief scats of their religion,
possessed a community of Jainas even before the time of this inscription.
[Footnote: This inscription also was first made known by Dr Bhagwanlal
Indiaji, _loc. cit_. p. 143.]

A large member of dedicatory inscriptions have come to light, which are
dated from the year 5 to 98 of the era of the Indo-Skythian kings,
Kanishka, Huvishka, and Vasudeva (Bazodeo) and therefore belong at latest
to the end of the first and to the second century A.D. They are all on the
pedestals of statues, which are recognisable partly by the special mention
of the names of Vardhamana and the Arhat Mahavira, partly by absolute
nudity and other marks. They show, that the Jaina community continued to
flourish in Mathura and give besides extraordinarily important
information, as I found in a renewed research into the ancient history of
the sect. In a number of them, the dedicators of the statues give not only
their own names, but also those of the religious teachers to whose
communities they belonged. Further, they give these teachers their
official titles, still used among the Jainas: _vachaka_, 'teacher',
and _ga[n.]in_, 'head of a school'. Lastly they specify the names of
the schools to which the teachers belonged, and those of their
subdivisions. The schools are called, _ga[n.]a_, 'companies'; the
subdivisions, _kula_, 'families' and _['s]akha_, 'branches'.
Exactly the same division into _ga[n.]a, ['s]akha_, and _kula_
is found in a list in one of the canonical works, of the ['S]vetambaras,
the _Kalpasutra_, which gives the number of the patriarchs and of the
schools founded by them, and it is of the highest importance, that, in
spite of mutilation and faulty reproduction of the inscriptions, nine of
the names, which appear in the _Kalpasutra_ are recognisable in them,
of which part agree exactly, part, through the fault of the stone-mason or
wrong reading by the copyist, are somewhat defaced. According to the
_Kalpasutra_, Sushita, the ninth successor to Vardhamana In the
position of patriarch, together with his companion Supratibuddha, founded
the 'Ko[d.]iya' or 'Kautika _ga[n.]a_, which split up into four
'_sakha_, and four '_kula_'. Inscripti