Jaina Art and Architecture Vol 02

SR No.: 011013
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A Ghosh
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1975
Total Pages: 326
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 92

CHAPTER 20)
NORTH INDIA
cloth dangling downwards (plates 148B to 150). Stone slabs (paspas) bearing all the twenty-four Tirthankaras (plate 150) were also popular with the Jaina community besides sarvatobhadra images. Scenes from the lives (kalyanakas) of the Jinas were also depicted in the shrines. A few icons of Bāhubali belonging to this period have also come to notice. Amongst the Devis, Ambikā, Sarasvati or Vāg-devi, Cakreśvari and Padmăvati were commonly worshipped. The deva-kulikās at Osia bear the representations of several Vidyā-devis like Naradattā, Gauri, Rohini, Mahâmānasi, Vajrănkusi, Vajraśpókhalā, Gāndhāri, Apraticakrā, Mānavi, Kāli, Vairogyā, etc. Apsarases, Dik-pālas, Nava-grahas, Gandharvas and Vidyadharas also found place in the Jaina temples. Yakşas and other parivāra-devatās, besides bhaktas including Jaina ācāryas, were normally incorporated in the avarana-images. At Osia a deva-kulikā also depicts Heramba which may be an adaptation from Brāhmaṇism. An icon of the elephant-headed Yaksa Pārsva, who is the nearest parallel to Ganesa in Jainism, has been noticed at Rohtak. Ambika was perhaps worshipped for progeny and welfare of children. The divine Jaina couple, identified by Bhattacharya as Gomedha and Ambikā, seems to have become a very popular deity by the eleventh century. Ksetrapāla (protector of a temple, city or village complex), who is also mentioned in the Bijolia inscription (V.S. 1226) along with Padmavati, Ambikā, Jvālini and Nāga Dharaṇa, was an important addition to the Jaina pantheon. Slabs carved with auspicious diagrams (yantras), Nandiśvara-dvipa, etc., were also regarded as sacred objects of reverence.
Forming a vast locale, the Jaina sculpture of the Cāhamāna and Gähadavāla age was influenced by many art currents and traditions unificd to a great extent by religious canons at least in regard to the general conception. The aesthetic ideal, unlike the classical standards, was, however, governed by rigid artistic conventions perhaps as a result of the fuller growth of templearchitecture. Goetz rightly remarks in respect of the development of medicval sculpture that it achieved a sweet original beauty towards the end of the tenth century, a classical maturity in the eleventh century, an elegant mannerism in the twelfth century, sinking slowly into a baroque and rococo and overelaboration during the late twelfth century, and afterwards, the evolution, though fundamentally the same everywhere, suffered various modifications in different kingdoms of northern India, reflecting, as it did, those factors of wealth and poverty, peace and war which quicken and retard social and cultural life's
1 B.C. Bhattacharya, The Jaina Iconography, Lahore, 1939, p. 82. * Epigraphia Indica, op. cit., p. 110. * Hermann Goetz, The Art and Architecture of Bikaner State, Oxford, 1950, p. 85.
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