Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/40

 20 JAINA ARCHITECTURE. BOOK V. 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 fagades 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 except that of Meguti at Aihole has a dated inscription upon it, nor a tolerably authenticated history, it is no wonder that guesses 274. Entrance to the Indra Sabha Cave at Elvira, (From a Photograph.) 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 the Indra Sabha group was excavated say not before A.D. 850. When with this new light we come to examine with care the architecture of these facades, we find the Elura group exhibits an extraordinary affinity with the southern style. The little detached shrine in the courtyard of the Indra Sabha, and the gateway shown in the above woodcut (No. 274), are as essentially Dravidian in style as the Kailas itself, and, like many of the details of these caves, so nearly identical that