Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/77

 CHAP. III. KHAJURAHO. 49 KHAJURAHO. Khajuraho, the ancient capital of the Chandellas, is situated 44 miles east from Naugong, about 145 miles W.S.W. from Allahabad, and about 150 miles south-east from Gwaliar. It is now a wretched deserted place, but has in and around it a group of some thirty temples, which are the most beautiful in form as well as the most elegant in detail of any of the temples now standing in India. 1 So far as can be made out from inscriptions, 2 as well as from their style, it appears that all these temples, with two unimportant exceptions, were executed nearly simultaneously and almost within the limits of the iith century; and, what is also curious, they seem to be nearly equally divided between the three religions. Roughly speaking, they are located in three groups, two consisting of Hindu temples Saiva and Vaishnava intermixed and one exclusively of Jaina temples. In each group there are one or more greater than the rest, and round some of them a few subordinate shrines are placed ; but most of them are independent temples. Among the Saiva temples the principal is the Kandarya Mahadeva, of which a repre- sentation will be given further on ; in the Vaishnava class it is the Chaturbhuja ; 3 and in the Jaina the Pamvanath : all three so like one another that it requires some familiarity with the photographs to distinguish the temple of one religion from those of the others. It looks as if all had been built by one prince, and by some arrangement that neither sect should surpass or be jealous of the other. Either from this, or from some cause we do not quite understand, we lose here those peculiarities we usually assign to Jaina temples of this age. The vimana or jikhara is more important than the porch. There are no courtyards with circumambient cells ; no prominent domes, nor, in fact, anything that distinguishes Jaina from Hindu architecture. If not under the sway of a single prince, they must have been erected in an age of extreme toleration, and when any rivalry that existed must only have been among the architects in trying who could produce the most beautiful 1 In the first half of last century they were much more numerous many having been removed for building material. 5 The inscriptions are translated in ' Epigraphia Indica,' vol. i. pp. 121-162. 3 Sometimes called the Ramachandra or the Lakshmanji temple. A sketch map of the Khajuraho temples is given in Cunningham's ' Survey Reports,' vol. ii. plate 95. The temple he calls Jina- natha's (No. 25), is that now known as Parrwanath's, whilst the temple of Adinath he calls Pirywanath's. Plans of the Jinanatha (Parrwanath) temple and of the Ganthai are given in * Survey Reports,' vol. x. plate 8, and 'Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal,' vol. xlviii. at p. 294. VOL. II. D