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.
146. Upper part of Porch of Jaina Temple at Delhi. (From a Photograph.)
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.