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Some Early Jaina Temples In Western India
M. A. DHAKY
ESTERN India, not merely in a territorial sense but in its more
vital, kinetic implication-the cultural aspect, and hence the Māru-Gurjara culture itself-owes much to Jainism, its Śvetāmbara variety in particular. This is symbolized in and summed up by the gentle character of her people, vegetarianism, and, above all, a great tradition of architecture, to the sustenance of which Jainas contributed almost half the share; they even aided its survival in the late Middle Ages, until finally, they are left, today, almost the sole patrons of the traditional, ecclesiastical architecture in Rajasthan and Gujarat which form an indissociable cultural unit, the Western India. The vāstuśāstras of Western India, composed for the most part by the anonymous Brahmanist architects, acknowledged (as early in Solanki times when the earliest of such books were compiled) their debt to the Jainas by according generous sections to Jaina iconography and architecture. And Jainas built their religious foundations that were legion, an extraordinary happening, had we not known the mediaeval epoch so intimately and so much in its completeness in relation to
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1 Vide Section I of the author's Introduction to Prāsādamañjarī cover
ing The Vastuśāstras of Western India (edited by PRABHASHANKAR O. SOMPURA).
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