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CHAPTER - 8
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
8.1. Is there a seperate Jaina architecture, like the Islam, Sikh or Christian architecture, is a question that needs serious consideration. This author is of the opinion that there is a distinct and isolate architecture which can be termed as Jaina architecture. Jaina shrines of Karņāțaka betray a seperate local character and aesthetic idiom developed out of long span of crystallized experience and skill on the basis of Jaina tradition.
8.1.1. "The art of Jainism... is comparatively uncomplicated and consititutes in the history of Indian imagery a separate chapter. It follows to some extent the general evolution of India's sculptural styles; nevertheless, when rendering its own most characteristic and prominent subjects the rigid forms of its perfected saviors - it adheres conscientiously to a stiff archaic ideal. .... Jaina art, then, clings tenaciously to its own archaic tradition, so that whether rendering the gods, who are the lords of the world, or the Tirthankaras who have gained release from the domain of the gods, its remains always rigid and some what massive and bulky... The origins of this art reach back, like the origins of Jainism itself, to the remotest depths of the unrecorded Indian past' [Henric zimmer: 1955:15, and 134].
8.1.2. Revival of Jaina art, architecture and literature was vibrant with the state support of the Rāstrakūtas, which
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