Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/87

 CHAP. III. CHITOR. 59 the slab has now been lost. This, however, is much too early a date for the style of the structure; and the discovery of a reference in a manuscript poem of late date ascribing it to Kumarapala of Gujarat (A.D. 1142-1172), though the style is in no way incon- sistent with such a date, as it is unsupported by any nearly contemporary record, is of no historical value. 1 The tower most probably belongs to the I2th century, and, it is said, was dedicated to Adinath, the first of the Jaina Tirthankaras, and nude figures of them are repeated some hundreds of times on the face of the tower, distinguishing it as a Digambara monument, whilst Kumarapala was a Swetambara. 2 The temple in the foreground is of a more modern date, being put together partly of fragments of older buildings which have disappeared. Most of the buildings above described belong to the first or great age of Jaina architecture, which extended down to about the year 1 300, or perhaps a little after that. There seems then to have been a pause, at least in the north of India caused probably by the devastating raids of 'Alau-d-din and others into Gujarat and Malwaf in the end of the I3th century. But a revival took place in the 1 5th century, especially under the reign of Kumbha, one of the most powerful of the kings of the Mewar dynasty, whose favourite capital was Chitor. His reign extended from 1428 to 1468, and it is to him that we owe the other of the two towers that still adorn the brow of Chitor. The older one has just been described and illus- trated. This one was erected to commemorate his victory over Mahmud Khalji of Malwa, in the year I44O. 3 It is therefore in Indian phraseology a Kirtti or Jay a Stambha, or pillar of victory, like that of Trajan at Rome, but in in- finitely better taste as an architectural object than the Roman example, though in sculpture it may be inferior. As will be seen from the next woodcut (No. 296), it stands on a basement, 47 ft. square and 10 ft. high, being nine storeys in height, each of which is distinctly marked on the exterior. A stair in the interior communicates with each, and leads to the two upper storeys, which are open, and more ornamental than those below. It is 30 ft. wide at the base, and 122 ft. 1 This is Abased on a verse in the ' 6ri-Chitrakutadurga-Mahavira-prisada - prasasti,' a poetical eulogy of a temple of Mahavira at Chitor, and dates at least three centuries later than Kumarapala's inscription at Chitor of A.D. 1150. had fallen ; a fourth of it or 20 ft. has been taken down, and rebuilt with imitations of the old work to replace lost portions. 3 Thomas, ' Pathan Kings of Delhi,' p. 354; Erskine, 'Memoirs of Baber,' p. 385 ; Stanley Lane-Poole, ' Mediaeval Epigraphia Indica,' vol. ii. p. 422." India,' p. 174. Previously, in 1418, 2 The upper portion of this tower had ] Kumbha had defeated the armies of become shaken and one of the balconies ! Gujarat and Malwa.