Jain Journal 1970 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 64

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JAIN JOURNAL
up to later Jaina temples in South India17. From recent wood houses in Asian mountain regions and from contemporary folklore we have to conclude that in remote past lantern-roof-structures above the fireplace of the peasant house ended by a hole through which smoke was to escape. Coomaraswamy and Eliade have pointed out the subsequent religious interpretation of this constructional device : as a means of communications between earth and sky, as a way to heaven. Consequently the parts of this ceiling type were again decorated with paintings or sculptures of celestial beings. Whilst in the beginning of this artistic evolution the symbolic meaning of the lantern roof as an image of heaven may have been generally understood 18, in the course of time the original significance of the building form was obliterated. As it happens frequently the architectonic formular persisted. Even during periods when it was used unconsciously it fulfilled its original symbolic function : to communicate between celestial and terestrial worlds19.
We find the same correlations between archetypical symbols and their various later artistic transformations in the mandalas consisting of combinations from squares and circles. Mandalas or magic diagrams were conceived by Jainas, Buddhists and Hindus to show in abstract forms heaven and earth, to make heavenly forces auspicious for earthly beings. Speculations on the square sky and the round earth, or on the square mandala of the terrestrial world and the circular eclipse resulted in numerous geometrical combinations of the square and the circle20. One of the oldest archaeological monuments is preserved in an āyāgapața, i.e. a Kusana period votive plaque from Mathuraal. A half millennium later the cave temple of Sittaravasal was carved out of the rock ; in one cell the square ceiling above the Tirthankaraş is decorated by a circular lotus22. This sanctuary is again separated by about half a millennium from Ranakpur where stone slabs over corridors form squares that are decorated by sculptural sequences of square-circle-square-circle (fig. 4). The North-west Indian Samatala Vitāna type of ceiling23 has reached at Ranakpur its perfection as a graphic rendering of the correlations between heaven and earth. Upto the present day we find in Jaina temples 24 and in Jaina manuscripts 25 painted mandalas formed of
17 Ramachandran, Lc., pl. 33. 18 Soper, 1.c., 228-231. 19 M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, London, 1958, 450.
Kramrisch, I.c., 23, 253. Soper, I.c., 226-228. 21 Fischer, Schopfungen ... 1.c., pl. 87.
Fischer, Caves ... 1.c., 9 and pl. in appendix. Nanavati, l.c., pl. 12, 13.
Ramachandran, l.c., pl. 24. 25 H. v. Glasenapp, Der Jainismus, Berlin, 1925, pl. 8.