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MONUMENTS & SCULPTURE A.D. 1000 TO 1300
(PART V
The Jaina temple, built in the formative stages of this great political clan and under the royal patronage especially of queen Santalā-devi, who continued to promote Jainism even after her royal husband Vişnuvardhana had been converted to Vaişņavism under the spell of Rāmānuja, expressed severe simplicity and structural clarity. Generally they avoided the stellate plan, the jagati-terrace and even the simulation of the northern tower-outline. The interior carvings, tough yet richer than the exterior, were largely confined to the pillars, ceilings, etc., in a modest way and carvings in its ritual niches or in the sanctum, largely specializing in the fine mirror-like surface-polish and chaste decorations that were also to inform the Later Cāļukyan temples further north. The typological or morphological variation of the parent model had a reasonably wide range depending upon the ritual requirements of subsidiary deities by way of subsidiary shrines, inside and on the outer mandapas. The temples continued, in all their variants, to have only a flat roof-terrace for its top, unlike the northern school, although it was apt to adopt the sukanāsa on the roof of the urdha-mandapa in its main essayings.
Under the Hoysaļas Sravanabelgola in Hassan District continued to be studded with temples, large and small. The Terina-basti, so called locally due to the temple-car near it, is actually a basadi for Bahubali who is enshrined in it. The garbha-grņa opens south and north. The car-like structure known as mandara has carvings of fifty-two Jina figures all around. The varicties of such a mandapa exist in Jaina usage, Nandiśvara and Meru, and this is of the former class. An inscription on it of 1117 says that Macikabbe and Sāntikabbe mother of Poysala Setti and Nemi Setti, royal merchants of king Vişnuvardhana, caused the temple and the mandara to be crected. The garbha-grha of the Sāsana-basti has the ardhu-mandupa and naya-ranga in front. Inside is consecrated a statue of Adinātha, 1 m, high, with malc cauri-bearers and with Gomukha and Cakreśvari, his Yakşa and Yakşi. The temple was caused to be erected by Gangarāya perhaps around 1117 and named Indirakula-gsha. It is so called due to a record being set up near its entrance. The Majjagannabasti, a small temple, 9:7 by 5.8 m., with its garbha-gļha produced by an ardhamand apa and nava-rargu enshrines an image of Anantanātha, over 1 m. high. Floral bandhana-mouldings are found around the otherwise plain exterior wall of the temple. The Savati-gandha-väraņa-basti is named after an epithet of Sāntalā-devi. It is large-sized, 21 by 103 m., with garbha-grha, ardha-mand apa and nava-ranga and an image of Sāntinātha, 1.5 m, high, enshrined in the sanctum and with the Yakşa and Yakşi in the sabhā-mandapa. The inscriptions near the entrance and on pedestals mention the construction of the shrine by Santalā-devi in 1123.
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