Though not the grandest, certainly the most elegant and graceful objects to be found in Canara belonging to the Jaina style of architecture are the stambhas, which are found attached to almost every temple. These are not, however, peculiar to the place or style. They are used sometimes by the Hindus, but then generally as deepdans, or lamp-bearing pillars, and in that case have some arrangement for exhibiting light from their summit. With the Jains this does not appear ever to have been the case. Their pillars are the lineal descendants of those of the Buddhists, which bore either emblems or statues—generally the former—or figures of animals; with the Jains or Vaishnavas they as generally bore statues. Be this as it may, they seem nowhere to have been so frequent or so elaborately adorned as among the Jains in the south, and especially in Canara. The example here given of one at Gurusankerry is a fair average specimen of its class ([Woodcut No. 155]). The sub-base is square and spreading; the base itself square, changing into an octagon, and thence into a polygonal figure approaching a circle; and above a wide-spreading capital of most elaborate design. To many this may at first sight appear top-heavy, but it is not so in reality. If you erect a pillar at all, it ought to have something to carry. Those we erect are copied from pillars meant to support architraves, and are absurd solecisms when merely supporting statues; we have, however, got accustomed to them, and our eye is offended if anything better proportioned to the work to be done is proposed; but, looking at the breadth of the base and the strength of the shaft, anything less than here exhibited would be found disproportionately small.
155. Stambha at Gurusankerry. (From a Photograph.)
On the lower or square part of these stambhas, as well as on the pillars inside the temples at Moodbidri ([Woodcut No. 152]) and elsewhere in Canara, we find that curious interlaced basket-pattern, which is so familiar to us from Irish manuscripts or the ornaments on Irish crosses. As pointed out in a former volume (ii. p. 475), it is equally common in Armenia, and can be traced up the valley of the Danube into central Europe; but how it got to the west coast of India we do not know, nor have we, so far as I know, any indication on which we can rely for its introduction. There was at all times for the last fifteen centuries a large body of Christians established on this coast who were in connection with Persia and Syria, and are so now. It would be strange, indeed, if it were from them the Jains obtained this device. But stranger things have happened than even this in the history of architecture, and few things can be more interesting when the means exist of tracing any connection that may be detected between them.
If any one wished to select one feature of Indian architecture which would illustrate its rise and progress, as well as its perfection and weakness, there are probably no objects more suited for this purpose than these stambhas, or free-standing pillars. They are found of all ages, from the simple and monolithic lâts which Asoka set up to bear inscriptions or emblems, some 250 years B.C. down to the seventeenth or perhaps even eighteenth century of our era. During these 2000 years they were erected first by the Buddhists, then by the Jains, and occasionally by the other sects in all parts of India; and notwithstanding their inherent frailty, some fifty—it may be a hundred—are known to be still standing. After the first and most simple, erected by Asoka, it may be safely asserted that no two are alike though all bear strongly the impress of the age in which they were erected, and all are thoroughly original and Indian in design.
It may be owing to the styloclastic propensities of the Moslems that these pillars are not found so frequently where they have held sway, as in the remoter parts of India; but, whether from this cause or not, they seem to be more frequent in Canara and among the southern Jains than in any other part of India. In the north we depend mainly on the rock-cut examples for their forms, but they are so usual there that it seems hardly doubtful they were relatively as frequent in connection with structural examples, though these have generally disappeared.
It has been suggested that there may be some connection between these stambhas and the obelisks of the Egyptians. The time that elapsed, however, between the erection of the monoliths in the valley of the Nile and those in India seems to render this doubtful, though they were certainly erected for similar purposes and occupied the same position relatively to the temples. When, however, we look at the vast difference between their designs, it is evident, even assuming a connection, that vast ages must have elapsed before the plain straight-lined forms of the obelisks could have been changed into the complicated and airy forms of the Jaina stambhas. The two are the Alpha and Omega of architectural design—the older, simple and severe, beyond any other examples of purely ornamental objects; the latter, more varied and more highly ornamented than almost any others of their class that can be named.
We are hardly yet in a position to push these speculations to their legitimate issue, and must wait for further information before any satisfactory conclusion can be derived from them; but meanwhile it may be pointed out how curiously characteristic of Indian art it is that this little remote province of Tulava, or Canara, should have a style of its own, differing essentially from that found in any other part of the Indian continent, but still having affinities with outlying and distant countries, with which one would hardly suspect any connection but for the indications derived from their architecture.
I cannot offer even a plausible conjecture how or at what time a connection existed between Nepal and Thibet and Canara; but I cannot doubt that such was the case, and that some one with better opportunities will hereafter explain what now seems so mysterious. It is less difficult to conjecture how early and frequent intercourse may have existed between the Persian Gulf and the western shores of India, and how the relations between these two countries may have been so intimate as to account for the amount of Assyrian, or, as we now call them Armenian, forms we now find in the Jaina architecture of southern India, especially in that below the Ghâts. It will require, however, that the Indian branch of the subject should be much more fully and more scientifically investigated than has hitherto been the case before it is worth while to do more than indicate how rich a field lies open to reward the industry of any future explorer.