James Fergusson

CONTENTS.

Jaina Temple, Delhi—Jaina Caves—Converted Mosques.

The two places in northern India where the most modern styles of Jaina architecture can probably be studied to most advantage are Sonaghur, near Dutteah, in Bundelcund, and Muktagiri, near Gawelghur, in Berar. The former is a granite hill, covered with large loose masses of primitive rock, among which stand from eighty to one hundred temples of various shapes and sizes (Woodcut No. 144, p. 256). So far as can be made out from photographs or drawings,[286] not one of these temples assumed its present form more than one hundred years ago. Their original foundation may be earlier, but of that we know nothing, no traveller having yet enlightened us on the subject, nor explained how and when this hill became a sacred mount.

Like most Hindu buildings of the period, all these temples show very distinctly the immense influence the Mahomedan style of architecture had on that of the native styles at this age. Almost all the temples here are surmounted by the bulbous dome of the Moguls. The native sikra rarely appears, and the openings almost invariably take the form of the Mahomedan foliated pointed arch. The result is picturesque, but not satisfactory when looked closely into, and generally the details want the purity and elegance that characterised the earlier examples.

Muktagiri, instead of being situated on a hill, as the tirths of the Jains usually are, is in a deep romantic valley, and the largest group of temples are situated on a platform at the foot of a waterfall that thunders down from the height of 60 ft. above them. Like those of Sonaghur, they are all of the modern domed style, copied from Moslem art, and none of them, so far as can be ascertained from such illustrations as exist, remarkable for beauty of design. It would, however, be difficult to find another place in India where

144. View of Jaina Temples, Sonaghur, in Bundelcund. (From a Photograph.)

architecture is so happily combined with the beauties of nature, and produces so pleasing an impression on the lover of the picturesque, though nearer acquaintance may result in disappointment to the antiquarian student of the style.

In remote parts of the empire, and especially in the immediate vicinity of the older shrines, this Mahomedan influence was much less felt than in the places just mentioned. The modern temples, for instance, at Palitana have domes, it is true, but they are much more directly the lineal descendants of the old Jaina domes than copies of those of the Moguls, and the foliated pointed arch rarely, if ever, occurs in the walls of that old city. It requires, indeed, a practised eye to discriminate between what is old and what is new, and without the too manifest inferiority of modern sculpture this would not always be easy even to the most accomplished antiquary.

One example must for the present suffice to show the effect aimed at by this style in recent times, as well as to illustrate how little it has degenerated from its ancient excellence. For, though this woodcut (No. 145) does not prove it, there are photographs in this country which do exhibit the marvellous details of this temple in a manner not to be mistaken. It was erected about thirty years ago by Huttising, a rich Jaina merchant, and dedicated to Dharmanath, the 15th Tirthankar. In this instance the external porch between two circular towers is of great magnificence and most elaborately ornamented, and leads to an outer court with sixteen cells on either side. In the centre of this is a domed porch of the usual form, with twenty pillars (see Woodcut No. 117). This leads to an inner porch of twenty-two pillars, two storeys in height, and with a roof of a form very fashionable in modern Jaina temples, though by no means remarkable for beauty, and difficult to render intelligible without more illustration than it merits. This leads to a triple sanctuary, marked by three sikras, or spires, externally. Behind this is a smaller court with two groups of eight cells, one in each angle, with a larger cell in the centre, and two, still more important, at the point of junction between it and the first court. To the eye of a European, unaccustomed to its forms, some of them may seem strange; but its arrangement, at least, will probably be admitted to be very perfect. Each part goes on increasing in dignity as we approach the sanctuary. The exterior expresses the interior more completely than even a Gothic design; and whether looked at from its courts or from the outside, it possesses variety without confusion, and an appropriateness of every part to the purpose for which it was intended.

Jaina Temple, Delhi.

There is one other example that certainly deserves notice before leaving this branch of the subject, not only on account of its beauty, but its singularity. In the preceding pages it has frequently been necessary to remark upon that curious wooden strut by which the Jains sought to relieve the apparent weakness of the longer beams under their domes. It occurs at Abu (Woodcut No. 129), at Girnar, at Oudeypore, and many other places we shall have to remark upon in the sequel; everywhere, in fact, where an octagonal dome was used. It was also employed by the Hindus in their torans, and so favourite an ornament did it become that Akbar used it frequently both at Agra and Futtehpore Sikri. For centuries it continued without much alteration, but at last, in such an example as the great Bowli at Bundi,[287] we find it degenerating into a mere ornament. It was left, however, for a Jaina architect of the end of the last or beginning of this century, in the Mahomedan city of Delhi, to suggest a mode by which what was only conventionally beautiful might really become an appropriate constructive part of lithic architecture.

As will be observed in the last cut (No. 146), the architect has had the happy idea of filling in the whole of the back of the strut with pierced foliaged tracery of the most exquisite device—thus turning what, though elegant, was one of the feeblest parts of Jaina design into a thoroughly constructive stone bracket; one of the most pleasing to be found in Indian architecture, and doing this while preserving all its traditional associations. The pillars, too, that support these brackets are of great elegance and constructive propriety, and the whole makes up as elegant a piece of architectural design as any certainly of its age. The weak part of the composition is the dome. It is elegant, but too conventional. It no longer has any constructive propriety, but has become a mere ornament. It is not difficult, however, to see why natives should admire and adopt it. When the eyes of a nation have been educated by a gradual succession of changes in any architectural object, persevered in through five or six centuries, the taste becomes so accustomed to believe the last fashion to be the best, the change has been so gradual, that people forget how far they are straying from the true path. The European, who has not been so educated, sees only the result, without having followed the steps by which it has been so reached, and is shocked to find how far it has deviated from the form of a true dome of construction, and, finding it also unfamiliar, condemns it. So, indeed, it is with nine-tenths of the ornaments of Hindu architecture. Few among us are aware how much education has had to do with their admiration of classical or mediÆval art, and few, consequently, perceive how much their condemnation of Indian forms arises from this very want of gradual and appropriate education.

Jaina Caves.

The Jains never were great cave-diggers; the nature of their religion did not require great assembly halls like the chaityas of the Buddhists, nor was it necessary that their priests should live apart in monasteries like those of their predecessors, and their ceremonial affected light and air rather than gloom or mystery. Like the Brahmans, however, during the stage of transition they could hardly refuse entirely to follow a fashion set by the Buddhists, to which all India had been accustomed for nearly 1000 years, and which was in reality a singularly impressive form of temple-building. We find them, consequently, excavating caves at Khandagiri, near Cuttack, in succession to the older ones in the Udayagiri. At Ellora they followed immediately after the Buddhists; and elsewhere there are caves which may be claimed by either religion, so like are they to each other in their transitional state.

Great light has recently been thrown on the history of these excavations by the discovery of a Jaina cave at Badami, in Dharwar, with a well-ascertained date.[288] There is no inscription on the cave itself, but there are three other Brahmanical caves in the same place, one of which has an inscription with an undoubted date, 500 Saka or A.D. 579; and all four caves are so like one another in style that they must have been excavated within the same century. The Jaina cave is probably the most modern; but if we take the year A.D. 650 as a medium date, we may probably consider it as certain within an error of twenty years either way.

The cave itself is very small, only 31 ft. across and about 19 ft. deep, and it is a little uncertain whether the groups of figures at either end of the verandah are integral, or whether they may not have been added at some subsequent period. The inner groups, however, are of the age of the cave, and the architecture is unaltered, and thus becomes a fixed standing-point for comparison with other examples; and when we come to compare it with the groups known as the Indra Subha and JaganÂt Subha at Ellora, we cannot hesitate to ascribe them to about the same age. Hitherto, the Jaina group at Ellora has been considered as the most modern there: an impression arising partly from the character of the sculptures themselves, which are neither purely Jaina nor purely Hindu—more, however, from the extreme difficulty of comparing rock-cut examples with structural ones. Our knowledge of the architecture of temples is, in nine cases out of ten, derived from their external forms, to which the interiors are quite subordinate. Cave-temples, however, have practically no exteriors, and at the utmost faÇades modified to admit more light than is usual in structural edifices, and then strengthened and modified so as to suit rock-cut architecture. As no ancient Jaina temple hitherto known had a dated inscription upon it, nor a tolerably authenticated history, it is no wonder that guesses might be wide of the truth. Now, however, that we know positively the age of one example, all this can be rectified, and there seems no doubt that all the Indra Subha group were finished before the cataclysm—say before A.D. 750.

When with this new light we come to examine with care the architecture of these faÇades, we find the Ellora group exhibits an extraordinary affinity with the southern style. The little detached shrine in the courtyard of the Indra Subha, and the gateway shown in the above woodcut (No. 147), are as essentially Dravidian in style as the Kylas itself, and, like many of the details of these caves, so nearly identical that they cannot possibly be distant in date. May we, therefore, assume from this that the Chalukyan kingdom of Kalian, in the 7th century of our era, extended from Ellora on the north to Badami on the south, and that all these rock-cut examples, with the temple at Aiwulli (Woodcut No. 120), were excavated or erected under their auspices?

To this we shall have occasion to revert presently, when describing the Dravidian style; but meanwhile it may be assumed that this theory represents the facts of the case more nearly than any hitherto brought forward. The Chalukyas of Kalian were situated on the border-line, halfway between the north and the south, and they, or their subjects, seemed to have practised the styles of architecture belonging to those two divisions indiscriminately—it might almost be said alternately—and we consequently find them mixed up here and at Dhumnar in a manner that is most puzzling.

The last king of this race, Vicramaditya II., ascended the throne A.D. 733,[289] and died probably in or about the year A.D. 750. It was probably, therefore, before that date that these Dravidian temple-forms were introduced by the Jains at Ellora. The Kylas and other great Saiva temples were, I believe, excavated by the Cheras or Cholas, who were the Dravidian races, and, if I mistake not, superseded the Chalukyas on the death of Vicramaditya, their last king, and carried their power, as will presently be explained, up to the Nerbudda. The Jains, however, seem to have been earlier in the field, and this little shrine in the court of the Indra Subha looks very much as if it may have been the model that suggested the Kylas, the greatest of all Indian rock-cut examples of its class.

Converted Mosques.

Another form in which we can study the architecture of the Jains in the north of India is the courtyards of the early mosques which the Mahomedans erected on their first entry into India. So essentially do some of these retain their former features that it might be convenient to describe them here. It is doubtful, however, in some instances whether the pillars are—some or all of them—in their original position, or to what extent they have been altered or eked out by the conquerors. Be this as it may, for our present purposes the one fact that is certain is, that none of them are now Jaina temples. All are Mahomedan mosques, and it will, therefore, be more logical, as well as more convenient, to group them with the latter rather than with the former class of buildings.

Were it not for this, the ArhaÍ-dÍn-ka Jomphra, at Ajmir—so called—might be, and has been, described as a Jaina temple.[290] So might a great part of the mosque at the Kutub, Delhi. That at Canouge, however, was originally a rearrangement, and has been much altered since I knew it; that at Dhar, near Mandu, is of comparatively recent date; while the Jaina pillars, so frequently used at Ahmedabad in the 15th century, are all imported, and used in positions for which they never were intended.

The astylar temples of the Hindus were useless to the Moslems except as quarries—a purpose to which they were frequently applied; but the light columnar style of the Jains not only supplied materials more easily adapted to their purposes, but furnished hints of which the Moslem architects were not slow to avail themselves. The architecture of Ahmedabad, for instance (A.D. 1396 to 1572), is derived far more directly from the Jaina than from any style familiar to their co-religionists in any other part of the world. The same may be said of that of Juanpore, though in the last-named city there is hardly a stone that can be said to be derived direct from any previously existing building.

The process by which this conversion of a Jaina temple to a Moslem mosque was effected will be easily understood by referring to the plan of that of Vimala Sah, on Mount Abu (Woodcut No. 129, p. 235). By removing the principal cell and its porch from the centre of the court, and building up the entrances of the cells that surround it, a courtyard was at once obtained, surrounded by a double colonnade, which always was the typical form of a mosque. Still one essential feature was wanting—a more important side towards Mecca; this they easily obtained by removing the smaller pillars from that side, and re-erecting in their place the larger pillars of the porch, with their dome in the centre; and, if there were two smaller domes, by placing one of them at each end. Thus, without a single new column or carved stone being required, they obtained a mosque which, for convenience and beauty, was unsurpassed by anything they afterwards erected from their own original designs.