Jain Temples of Rajasthan

Author(s): Sehdav Kumar
Publisher: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Art Abhinav Publications

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in a detailed textbook of the craft, the Isanasivagurudevapaddhati. In this book the sustaining power of tradition and its meaning are expressed by the rites performed when the sthapaka, the guru, installs the temple. He places in it the seed, bija, of the temple. While the temple is built, the seed, 'the causal creative image of the temple', dwells in the 'heart-lotus' of the guru. On completion of the building, the seed is ritually brought from the heart of the guru and placed in the temple. This seed is consciousness, cit. It is then that the sthapati, the architect, gives the entire merit to the patron, for says the text, 'Brahma himself is the Architect'.
In the long history of India, with works of great art created throughout the centuries, a deep and abiding concern for the quality of one's work is most evident. Apprenticeship with a master or with a recognized member of the craftsmen's guilds was a safeguard against low standards, incompetence, or fraud or self-deception. That it didn't do away with these faults altogether is evident from the threatening words of the Samarangana-sūtradhāra, a most exhaustive compendium on the visual arts which was compiled in the earlier part or the middle of the eleventh century by King Bhoja. From the warning, one discovers that nothing less than death awaits one who practises architecture without correct knowledge or is mistakenly proud of false knowledge. Architecture was not only a utilitarian art, but it evoked cosmic principles; an architect went to his task in the likeness of the architect of the universe, Viśvakarma. Were the architect thus to infringe upon any rule or deviate from correct proportions, such neglect or dissonance was felt to be fatal to the structure, not only of a particular building, but also to the order of the state, indeed of the universe. For this reason, "the ghost of such a man, dead before his time, will wander on this wide earth." Having infringed the order of the universe, he is doomed to belong nowhere; "he who should have been a builder of homes is to remain homeless in a disembodied condition.""
In addition to the moral and metaphysical concerns about the quality of the artist, King Bhoja, as author and compiler of the great compendium, the Samaranganasūtradhāra, takes a third source of failure into account. This is the case of the expert in his craft, the virtuoso who lacks intellectual insight. Of him the king says that 'like a blind man he will be misled by anyone', for he is his own dupe, a potential casualty in the field of art.
The earlier encyclopedia of all the arts, the Visņudharmottara, written about the sixth century, comprises a dialogue between a
The Hindu Vastupurusha
mandala transformed into king and a sage. Here the king inquires and the sage instructs in
architectural plans.
the knowledge of the arts. Such knowledge is not only the domain of one or the other of the sages and seers, but in the sum
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