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2005
PRESERVING THE JAIN MONUMENTS AT SITTANNAVASAL IN TAMILNADU
S. Swaminathan, Tamilnadu
The contribution of the Jains to the culture of the Tamil country is scarcely appreciated. Their contribution to literature, art and architecture is immense. There exist even today a number of Jaina vestiges in Tamilnadu, which stand testimony to this fact.
One such is the Sittannavasal monument complex, in Tamilnadu, with the priceless Jain paintings that its cave temple contains. The pre-9th century paintings are second only in importance to the Ajanta paintings in the Indian artistic heritage. Like many of the ancient monuments in India these paintings are in the danger of being lost completely.
Sudharsanam, a cultural centre based in Pudukkottai, in which district the monument complex lies, has proposed a scheme of preserving the paintings. The proposal was presented in Oct 2004 before the Research Foundation for Jainology, Chennai, an organisation of the Jaina community, which is assisting research on Jainology and spreading the message of the Faith, which has agreed in principle to undertake the project.
The Sittannavasal complex is famous for four heritage sites: 1) a Jain cave temple of pre-9th and the incomparable paintings that it contains, 2) a natural cavern where Jain ascetics practiced austerities from the 3rd century BC onwards, with more than 20 stone beds and inscriptions in Tamil from 3rd century BC till 13th century AD, 3) a submerged Hindu cave temple in a tarn and 4) megalithic burials in hundreds.
In order to protect what little remains of these precious paintings from further damage, the proposal envisages keeping the original monument under controlled condition and restricting visitors and recreating the cave temple to its original glory in the vicinity of the monuments. It also proposes building a heritage complex around the recreated temple laying out four theme pavilions, highlighting four essential aspects of the monuments that have bearing on Indian and Tamil culture:
Chitram, a painting pavilion to focus on the Indian painting tradition,
Aksharam, an epigraphy pavilion for showing development of Indian scripts and scripts of many South-east Asian languages from Brahmi,
Mandiram, a temple architecture pavilion to trace the development of temple architecture from cave temple, and, finally, Gnanam, a pavilion bringing out the Jain
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