Sacred Stone and Silent Narratives: Jaina Antiquities for Bharatiya Jnana Parampara of Purulia District of West Bengal, India
Dr. Laxmiram Gope, Sujit Kuiry, Tapas Singh Sardar and Manas Khan
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Abstract
The paper discusses the Jain cultural heritage in the Purulia district and how it will foster the Bharatiya Jnana Parampara. In this regard, researchers explored various historical sites in Purulia that still contain the ruins of a Jaina temple. Basically, researchers have first- hand information, as they belong to the Purulia district, and are motivated to select such a burning issue in the context of the NEP-2020 and Indian Knowledge Systems. In the process, extensive work on Jain sculptural and architectural remains has been recorded in the river valleys adjoining the Chotanagpur plateau region and the present-day district of Purulia, which remains the most important area for the provenance of these remains. Its noticed that the Jaina civilizations nourished and flourish places of Chotanagpur area and this the confluence of the tangible and intangible cultural meets of Manbhum (nowadays known as Jangalmahal forest land) followed by the development in the hills land of West Bengal, it was the Chotanagpur plateau and its adjoining regions (so far as Eastern India is concerned) that witnessed the rapid diffusion of this faith during the 9th to the 11th/12th centuries C.E. Still many ruins temple existence in the Daul Ghata and other places which showed that the once Purulia is the land of Jaina. The archeological evidence also shows that Jainism and its aesthetic sense still have many educational implications. In this regard, our humble attempt is to integrate Jainism's aesthetic sensibility with the Bharatiya Jnana Parampara. The objective of the present study is to document Jaina practices within the context of Bharatiya Jnana Parampara, align them with contemporary educational practices, and relate the reported specimens to the archaeological context. In this paper, the researchers analyzed data to provide a coherent picture of the newly documented Jaina sculptural sites in the Damodar River valley, Purulia district, West Bengal. The present study has investigated the cultural heritage of a region during the early medieval and medieval periods, as well as its regional identity and the contributions of the Jain religious tradition. Using the observational method,
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Gope, L. et al. (2026). Sacred Stone and Silent Narratives: Jaina Antiquities for Bharatiya Jnana Parampara of Purulia District of West Bengal, India. Boston Research Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 6(4), 17-24. https://bostonresearch.org/scholarly-article/sacred-stone-and-silent-narratives-jaina-antiquities-for-bharatiya-jnana-parampara-of-purulia-district-of-west-bengal-india/
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© 2026 Gope, Kuiry, Sardar and Khan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Journal compilation © 2026 Boston Research Journals.
*Correspondence: Dr. Laxmiram Gope
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