Floods, Taxes, and a Stone Cow: A Jain Apocalyptic Account of the Gupta Period.

The Jains are not readily identifiable as a prominent component of society during the Gupta Empire, with the archaeological record of their activities being relatively meagre. This has led to the hypothesis that this community may have migrated from the Gupta realms to the west and south of the subcontinent as a result of antipathy towards the non-orthodox articulated in brahmanical/Vaiṣṇava texts such as theViṣṇupurāṇa. This paper identifies in the Śvetāmbara text, theTitthogālī, a possible apocalyptic interpretation of this period in which the Jains are described as being subjected to oppression by King Caturmukha and a goddess in the form of a stone cow. TheTitthogālīalso records the disastrous impact of the flooding of the city of Pāṭaliputra. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]