Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/55

 CHAP. III. GIRNAR. 33 goes to decay, no one ever after repairs it, but its materials are ruthlessly employed to build a new temple or mosque according to the latest fashion of the day. With the Jains it is otherwise. If a man is not rich enough to build a new fane, he may at least be able to restore an old one, and the act with them seems equally meritorious, as it usually is considered to be with us ; but the way they set about it generally consists in covering up the whole of the outside with a thick coating of chunam, filling up and hiding all the details, and leaving only the outline. The interior is generally adorned with repeated coats of whitewash, as destructive to artistic effect, but not quite so irreparable. The plan and the outline are generally, however, left as they were originally erected, and that is probably the case with the temple of Neminatb. It stands in a courtyard measuring 195 ft. by 1 30 ft. over all externally. Around the courtyard are arranged some seventy cells with a covered and enclosed passage in front of them, and each of these contains a cross-legged seated figure of one of the Tirthankaras, and generally with a bas-relief or picture represent- ing Yakshas or spirit attendants. But for the fall of the rock there would have been nine or ten more cells, and indeed this repetition of the images of saints, like the multiplication of temples, seems to have been the great aim of the Jaina architects. As we may see in a Hindu temple at Prambanan in Java, there were 236 small temples or cells surrounding the great one, and there, as here, each of them was intended to contain a similar image of one of the objects of worship. Nearer the entrance than the temple of Neminath is a triple one erected by the brothers Tejahpala and Vastupala, 1 who also erected one of the principal temples on Abu. From inscriptions upon its walls it seems to have been erected in A.D 1230. The plan is that of three shrines joined to one hall, an arrangement not unfrequently found in the south, but occasionally also in the north, and which is capable of great variety of effect, and of light and shade to a greater extent than plainer forms. In this instance there is an image of Mallinath, the iQth Tirthankara, in the central cell, but the lateral rooms each contain a remark- able solid pile of masonry called a Samosarana that on the north side named Meru or Sumeru a fabled mountain of the Jains and Hindus having a square base (Woodcut No. 281) ; that on the south, called Samet Sikhara Parasnath, in Bengal with a nearly circular base. Each rises in four tiers of diminishing width, nearly to the roof, and is surmounted by 1 The inscriptions ascribe the temple to Vastupala only, as "the elder brother of Tejahpala." VOL. II. C