Palitana—Girnar—Mount Abu—Parisnath—Gualior—Khajurâho.
Palitana.
The grouping together of their temples into what may be called “Cities of Temples” is a peculiarity which the Jains practised to a greater extent than the followers of any other religion in India. The Buddhists grouped their stupas and viharas near and around sacred spots, as at Sanchi, Manikyala, or in Peshawur, and elsewhere; but they were scattered, and each was supposed to have a special meaning, or to mark some sacred spot. The Hindus also grouped their temples, as at Bhuvaneswar or Benares, in great numbers together; but in all cases, so far as we know, because these were the centres of a population who believed in the gods to whom the temples were dedicated, and wanted them for the purposes of their worship. Neither of these religions, however, possess such a group of temples, for instance, as that at Sutrunjya, or Palitana, as it is usually called, in Gujerat, about thirty miles from Gogo, on its eastern coast ([Woodcut No. 125]). No survey has yet been made of it, nor have its temples been counted; but it covers a very large space of ground, and its shrines are scattered by hundreds over the summits of two extensive hills and in the valley between them. The larger ones are situated in tûks, or separate enclosures, surrounded by high fortified walls; the smaller ones line the silent streets. A few yatis, or priests, sleep in the temples and perform the daily services, and a few attendants are constantly there to keep the place clean, which they do with the most assiduous attention, or to feed the sacred pigeons, which are the sole denizens of the spot; but there are no human habitations, properly so called, within the walls. The pilgrim or the stranger ascends in the morning, and returns when he has performed his devotions or satisfied his curiosity. He must not eat, or at least must not cook his food, on the sacred hill, and he must not sleep there. It is a city of the gods, and meant for them only, and not intended for the use of mortals.
Jaina temples and shrines are, of course, to be found in cities, and
125. The Sacred Hill of Sutrunjya, near Palitana.
where there are a sufficient number of votaries to support a temple, as in other religions; but, beyond this, the Jains seem, almost more than any sect, to have realised the idea that to build a temple, and to place an image in it, was in itself a highly meritorious act, wholly irrespective of its use to any of their co-religionists. Building a temple is with them a prayer in stone, which they conceive to be eminently acceptable to the deity and likely to secure them benefits both here and hereafter.
It is in consequence of the Jains believing to a greater extent than the other Indian sects in the efficacy of temple-building as a means of salvation, that their architectural performances bear so much larger a proportion to their numbers than those of other religions. It may also be owing to the fact that nine out of ten, or ninety-nine in a hundred, of the Jaina temples are the gifts of single wealthy individuals of the middle classes, that these buildings generally are small and deficient in that grandeur of proportion that marks the buildings undertaken by royal command or belonging to important organised communities. It may, however, be also owing to this that their buildings are more elaborately finished than those of more national importance. When a wealthy individual of the class who build these temples desires to spend his money on such an object, he is much more likely to feel pleasure in elaborate detail and exquisite finish than on great purity or grandeur of conception.
All these peculiarities are found in a more marked degree at Palitana than at almost any other known place, and, fortunately for the student of the style, extending through all the ages during which it flourished. Some of the temples are as old as the 11th century, and they are spread pretty evenly over all the intervening period down to the present century. But the largest number and some of the most important are now erecting or were erected in the present century or in the memory of living men. Fortunately, too, these modern examples by no means disgrace the age in which they are built. Their sculptures are inferior, and some of their details are deficient in meaning and expression; but, on the whole, they are equal, or nearly so, to the average examples of earlier ages. It is this that makes Palitana one of the most interesting places that can be named for the philosophical student of architectural art, inasmuch as he can there see the various processes by which cathedrals were produced in the Middle Ages, carried on on a larger scale than almost anywhere else, and in a more natural manner. It is by watching the methods still followed in designing buildings in that remote locality that we become aware how it is that the uncultivated Hindu can rise in architecture to a degree of originality and perfection which has not been attained in Europe since the Middle Ages, but which might easily be recovered by following the same processes.