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"The dome culminates in a richly carved pendant, like a stalactite hung in the centre of the vault. Placed athwart the lower rings of the dome are brackets with representation of Jaina goddesses of wisdom. In their semi-detached projection they appear like struts actually holding the cupola... There is, to be sure, true beauty in the pearly radiance reflected from what seems like a huge and weightless flower. Looking up at this ceiling is to behold a dream-like vision blooming, in the halflight, like some marvellous under-water formation in coral and motherof-pearl. The deeply pierced working of the figures and the unbelievably delicate foliate motifs have the fragility of snowflakes." (The Art and Architecture of India, Great Britain 1959, p. 169) Whereas the fresco depicting apsarās in the Jaina sanctuary of Sittanavasal near Tanjore and those appearing in the paintings of the Indra Sabha Cave at Ellura convey an ideal of feminine charm that emphasises upon the longing of the poet in man for the eternally fair and winsome as evoked in antiquity by the Roman goddess Pomona and the Teutonic Idun, the concept of the divine woman in Jaina art only tends to be associated with the knowledge and liberation of the Tirthankaras. Considering that the flying angels of Ajanta in a Buddhist setting reflect an unbelievable beauty as indicative of an ethereal perspective and the apsaras and devānganās of Indian art in general convey a sense of feminine grace which vie with the charm of Hellenistic masterpieces and the works of such celebrities as Benvenuto Cellini and Giovanni Bandini of mediaeval Florence it may be felt simultaneously that the central inspiration of Jaina art in this respect symbolises a distinctive ideal and yearning. The Jaina divinities and godlings as envisaged in art do not so much promise of a paradise and its perpetual felicity as much the bliss and the final realisation epitomised by the emancipated. Thus, in these instances the art will make communion with the knowledgeable in the perspective of the ideology and the metaphysics involved. The elegant dancers of Sittanavasal manifest the splendour of their eternal youth fit to be complimented by a classic verse. By striking a pose by her dainty arms a dancer here projects a dreamlike grace whose function is only ancillary to the way of gods still far away from the ultimate realisation, the plane of the Siddhas. Likewise, the divine lovers shown flying in the firmament in the paintings of the Indra Sabha Cave at Ellura will again define the felicity of a heaven where mortal longings and desire find a destination unhindered by physical weight and all reproach. This promise of happiness, if accepted as such, is of course still remote from the horizon of realisation attained by the Jinas who in their earlier births and initial years before becoming a Kevalin lived as one among other mortals. As if to define the progress of the vigilent towards the celestial height where passion and desire merge dreamlike in the soft haze of silken nimbus or cirrus clouds losing the
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