Jain Temples of Rajasthan

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

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they are present ubiquitously. Nude yakṣis attend on a sculptured stupa at Mathura and are seen in lascivious poses on railing-posts. While it is true that Jaina iconography does not permit the cosmic sexualism of some Tantric, Brahmanical and Buddhist deities, erotic couples appear covertly in the medieval Jain temples at Khajuraho and elsewhere and very freely on the sikhara of the one at Arang in Chattisgarh....Untrammeled by the austere tenets of the creed at the service of which he was working, the artist followed the practices of an age which fully sanctioned, even relished, them. In the same way, while the texts forebode the Jaina monks to live in painted houses, the monks did put up with the delightful paintings in their cave-temples. Such was the urge of artistic embellishment."2
In addition, over the centuries, a vast range of cosmogonic and cosmological symbolisms, drawn from Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions, was continually integrated into the rich morphology of the Indian temples of all three traditions. Jain temples and sculpture, thus, should be viewed in the context of the overall Indian culture, and various cross-currents that have nourished them, and not apart from them. In fulfilment of their spiritual needs, the Jains followed similar lines of development through the ages as the followers of other Indian creeds did. They worked within the framework of their own religious beliefs and cosmological constructs, but nevertheless always remained an integral part of the greater Indian cultural ethos.
Vatthu-sara-payarana in Prakrit is the first major treatise on Jain architecture written in 1315 A.D. The first three chapters in this treatise are devoted to residential houses, iconography and temple architecture.
The Jain temple, it has been suggested, should be seen as the symbolic representation of "the samavasarana or the fascinating auditorium of the tirthankara who, as one of those to be bowed before any one of the other parameșthins, would deliver a sermon only inside the samavasaraṇa, whose idol was the first to appear and whose iconic symbol in the form of mūlanayaka or the main deity must be installed in the temple....The Jaina temple then, with this very idea behind its origin, went on to having a parallel and simultaneous evolution....with the temples of co-traditions."3
As far back as the fourth century B.C. there is a long and extensive history of building of Jain monuments and sculptures in many parts of India - from Mathura to Udayagiri, from Marwar and Mungthala near Mount Abu in Rajasthan to Karnataka in the South. Even as the vagaries of nature and political conflicts, both internal and external, took their toll, many outstanding examples of Jain monuments and temples are still to be found in many parts of the country. In particular, the present states of Rajasthan and
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