Their plans, as far as can be made out from photographs, are those usual in Jaina temples—spacious, well-lighted porches, leading to a dark cell in which the image of one of the Tirthankars is placed, naked of course, as all the southern Jains seem to have belonged to the Digambara sect.
Their age has not yet been determined with certainty, as no inscriptions from them have yet been published or translated, but, in so far as information can be gathered from the various sources available, three or four hundred years seems to be about the limit of their age. Some may go back as far as 1300, but it looks as if the kingdom of the Zamorin was at the height of its prosperity about the time it was first visited by the Portuguese, and that the finest temples may belong to that age.
153. Pavilion at Gurusankerry. (From a Photograph.)
Besides the greater temples, there are several varieties of smaller ones which seem peculiar to the style—such, for instance, as the five-pillared shrine at Gurusankerry ([Woodcut No. 153]). Four-pillared pavilions are not uncommon in front of Hindu temples in the south. There is a very famous one, for instance, on the opposite shore of India at Mahavellipore, but not one, that I know of, with five pillars, or with access to the upper chambers. There are three of these upper chambers in this instance—the two lower now closed, but apparently originally open; but to what use they were devoted, or what purpose they were intended to subserve, is by no means clear. At the base of the temple are a number of stones bearing images of serpents; seven or eight are now there, and the serpents themselves are some with one, others three, five, or seven heads. It may be that this is a serpent temple, and that the living form of this strange divinity, when alive, inhabited the upper storey. But it may also be, that the stones were brought there in modern times, so that till some one on the spot will take the trouble to ascertain the facts of the case, it is not safe to speculate regarding them.
154. Tombs of Priests, Moodbidri. (From a Photograph.)
A third feature, even more characteristic of the style, is found in the tombs of the priests, a large number of which are found in the neighbourhood of Moodbidri. Three of these are illustrated in the annexed Woodcut (No. [154]). They vary much in size and magnificence, some being from three to five or seven storeys in height, but they are not, like the storeys of Dravidian temples, ornamented with simulated cells and finishing with domical roofs. The division of each storey is a sloping roof, like those of the pagodas at Katmandhu, and in China or Thibet. In India they are quite anomalous. In the first place, no tombs of priests are known to exist anywhere else, and their forms, too, are quite unlike any other building now known to be standing in any other part of India.