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ii
[Holy Abu
magnificent shrine at Rāṇakapur in the Goḍvāḍā district of the old Jodhpur State, now in Rajasthan.
The translator has not tried to add or change anything in the text and has only added a few footnotes, specified as translator's notes. A bibliography of the works mainly referred to in the text is added, it includes a list of literary sources on Vimala Saha, Vastupala and the Abu shrines, taken partly from the Gujarati foreword by Muni Shri Vidyāvijaya, the rest of the foreword being omitted. A table of the complexion and symbols of each of the 24 Jinas is appended by the translator.
The Vimala Vasahi alone practically exhausts the whole Shvetambara Jaina Pantheon of its age, and is, therefore, an indispensable record for a student of Jaina iconography. It is not possible to add any iconographic notes and only references to published papers etc., discussing some of these sculptures are added.
It will be seen that the five shrines belong to different centuries. The Vimala-and Lūṇa-vasahīs, which are the two older and more important shrines, unfortunately became victims of more than one Muslim invasions. The inscriptions show that the Vimalavasahi underwent at least two different repairs besides the two undertaken in this century. It is, therefore, obvious that the architecture and sculpture of each temple require to be studied with a very critical eye since all the existing parts of the Vimla-or the Lūṇa-Vasahīs do not belong to the age of their original construction.
In a study of Indian temples, this fact of later repairs or additions, replacements etc. has been often overlooked. The famous Kailasa Cave at Ellora shows, according to Dr. H. Goetz, 1 various phases of architecture and sculp
1 In Artibus Asiae.
