Holy Abu

Author(s): Jayantvijay
Publisher: Yashovijay Jain Granthmala

Page 56

Introduction)
xxiii
vals, depict patterns of figures and animals, a plastic record of some ancient half-obliterated memory. The lowest contains the fore-fronts of elephants, their trunks intertwined, as many as one hundred and fifty of them in close rank. A few mouldings above is another border representing images in niches, also repeated many times, and again over that a similar course of dancing figures. This is followed higher up in the concavity by a series of horsemen, finishing in the topmost storey with more figures engaged in an endless dance. Between these various figured courses are ornamental repeats, gradually becoming more pronounced until towards the apex they culminate in a grouping of "pendents not unlike festoons of foliage suspended from the high trees of a forest. But this is not all. Boldly superimposed athwart the lower of these circular rings is a series of sixteen brackets consisting of female figures representing Vidyādevīs or goddesses of knowledge, each contained within an aureole, their high semi-detached projection giving them the appearance of supplementary braces supporting the wall. ?”
About the second temple, which resembles the Vimala Vasahī in proportions, quality of idea and material, Percy Brown writes :
“..it is commonly supposed that one was copied from the other, but it is more probable that the Tejapāla temple illustrates the natural evolution of the style, the few differences proving the really small extent the architectural mode changed during the course of the two centuries... Such differences are mainly matter of detail, among which is the treatment of the eight different types of pillars to be found in the later example. The shafts are in most cases circular in section and are evenly diapered with mouldings and conventional or geometrical patterns resembling reticulations.?"
1 For further discussion on architecture, see Ibid., pp. 147-148.
* Ibid., p. 149.