Holy Abu

SR No.: 023259
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jayantvijay
Publisher: Yashovijay Jain Granthmala
Publication Year: 1954
Total Pages: 380
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 14 MB

Page 59

[Holy Abu
Portrait sculpture in Western India deserves a special study, especially because the Jaina shrines provide abundant material in the form of portraits of male and female donors, with inscriptions on pedestals giving names and dates. Some of these portraits seem to have been real portraits and not stylised ones. Especially interesting are the portraits of the various members of the family of Vastupala-Tejapāla in the Lunavasahi and the two figures of Sūtrahāra Kelā and Sūtrahāra Loyaṇa in a ceiling of the Vimala-Vasahi. It may incidentally be noted here that the Ranakpur shrine also provides portraits of artists and donors of the shrine.
Scattered all over in North Gujarat and Mārvāḍ are various sculptures of Jaina and Hindu (especially Shaiva) saints, which also deserve to be studied, especially sculptures which are set up either in the life-time of a monk or immediately after his death by his disciple.
Artists of the Jaina shrines, especially of the VimalaVasahi and the Lūṇavasahi, are much more successful in decorative carvings, floral designs, arabesques, lotuses, lotus-pendants, octagonal pendants, rows of swans, elephants etc., than in their study of human forms. The richness and excellence of such ornamental carvings have attracted all lovers of Art.
The various reliefs and sculptures of gods and goddesses in these shrines have their counterpart in Jaina Miniature Paintings from Western India. Some of the "Jātaka "stories seem to be stone copies of earlier Jaina murals or frescoes, now totally lost. This work of Muni Shri Jayantavijayaji is especially valuable in as much as he has explained in it the significance of a very large number of such relief plaques of stones in these two shrines, without which a visitor to the shrines would not be able to evaluate properly the contribution of the artists and donors of the two shrines to the cause of Jaina Church and Indian Art.
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