Religion and Culture of the Jains

SR No.: 002009
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1999
Total Pages: 258
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Religion, & Culture
File Size: 16 MB

Page 187

ART AND ARCHITECTURE
165
examples of such Jaina caves are those at Singhanpur and Jogimārā in Madhya Pradesh, Barabar and Rājgir in Bihar, Pabhosā in U.P., Girnār in Gujarat, Mohial in Maharashtra, Ramkond in Andhra, and sittanavasal in the erstwhile Pudukotta state in south India.
Some of the caves in the last named place and its neighbourhood contain polished stone beds which are believed to have been the sallekhanā beds of Jaina ascetics. Inscriptions in the Brāhmī script of the third second century B.C. discovered there prove them conclusively to be adhişthānas of Jaina monasteries. They were porbably the places resorted to for purposes of worship or penance, and continued to be so till cave-temples were scooped out of the rocks, those on the western slopes of the Sittanavasala hill being cut about 600 A.D.
The more important of the still earlier rock-cut cave temples of the Jainas are those at Khandagiri-Udayagiri in Orissa, Rājgir in Bihar, Udaigiri in Madhya Pradesh, Chandragiri of Saravanabelgola in Mysore, Junāgarh in Gujarat, Bādāmi, Ajantā, Aihole, Patani, Nasik, Ankai and Dhārāshiva (Terapur) in Maharashtra, and Kulumulu in Tamilnadu.
In fact, it was only from the third-fourth century A.D. on that the practice of living more or less permanently in out of the way temples or establishments gradually began to gain ground with a large section of the Jaina ascetic, and it gave encouragement to the making of cave temples. As Smith observed, "The varying practical requirements, of course, has an effect on the nature of the buildings required for particular purposes." Still, the Jaina monks could never do away with their asceticism and austere way of living in a very considerable degree. It is probably why even in the days of Ajantā and Ellora but few Jaina caves were built and there were only about three dozens such cave temples built between the 5th and the 12th centuries A.D., and these, too, by the Digambara section of the Jaina community.”