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History of Jainism with Special Reference to Mathurā
Hindu can rise in archietecture to a degree of originality and conception which has not been attained in Europe since the Middle Ages, but which might easily be recovered by following the same process. 421
By this time the patronage of Jainism had passed into the hands of the merchants and the common people; therefore, the architecture of the Jaina temples of Mount Abu can be called the architecture of the people.422
Nearly one-third of the extant temples at Khajuraho are Jaina temples. Architecturally, the older temples at Khajuraho may justly be regarded as the most beautiful in form as well as the most elegant in detail among the temples of northern India; the only others that can be compared with them is the earlier group at Bhubaneswar in Orissa. 423 Fergusson remarks about the Jaina temple of Pārsvanātha at Khajuraho,
There is nothing probably in Hindu architecture that surpasses the richness of its three-storeyed base combined with the extreme elegance of outline and delicate detail of the upper part.424
Percy Brown writes about a ruined Jaina temple at Khajuraho,
In its dismantled condition one can only admire the elegance of its pillars and the richness of the carved doorway. Some of the pillars are most gracefully proportioned, tall slender shafts, octagonal below and circular above, clasped around at intervals with girdles of delicate carving and surmounted by an appropriate bracket capital.425
The Jainas also excelled in the construction of free-standing pillars called mana-stambhas which were almost invariably erected near the temples,
421. HIEA, p. 228. 422. H. Zimmer, op. cit., p. 266. 423. IGI, II, pp. 179-80. 424. HIEA, p. 246. 425. Percy Brown, op. cit., pp. 136-7.
