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MONUMENTS & SCULPTURE A.D. 1300 TO 1800
(PART VI
of medieval
Its triple shrines demonstrate only a conventionalized form sikharas.
As already stated, the only representative of Jaina structural art in the Himalayan belt is a temple-complex at Dwarahat known as the Manya. It consists of a collection of small deva-kulikās on the three sides of a platform, which perhaps supported the main temple originally. Some of the temple-lintels and base of the platform bear crude figures of the Jinas; otherwise the shrines are absolutely plain and highly stylized. Probably these were raised during the rule of later Katyüri rājās of this area around the fourteenth century. It is, however, significant to note from epigraphical and iconographic vestiges' that there was at least one Jaina establishment at Dwarahat in the tenth century.
Jaina temples of the Madhyadeśa (Ganga-Yamunā valley) mostly belong either to the seventeenth or later centuries, although most of them contain images of earlier periods. Several shrines were repaired or enlarged to a considerable extent. Structurally, these edifices have limited reflections of the earlier art-traditions. Of the extant temples only a few invite our attention, such as those of Ayodhyā, Vārāṇasi, Trilokpur, Sauripura and Firozabad.
Ayodhya, being the birth-place of Adinātha, is regarded as one of the holiest centres of Jaina pilgrimage. Shrines of an early period must have stood here, but of the existing ones only one deserves a mention. This shrine is in the quarter called Katra. It houses several Jaina sculpture, of which the oldest is dated in the Vikrama year 1224. Other icons bear dated inscriptions of the Vikrama year 1548 and 1626. The temple does not seem to date earlier than the eighteenth century, for a tork (plate 221B) enshrining the footprints of Sumatinātha in its courtyard bears a dated record of the Vikrama year 1781. A four-sided conical sikhara with a fluted exterior surmounts the cella, but the arrangement is not impressive. The tonk is a small domed octagonal structure. There are other tonks too of the Jinas, but they have hardly any artistic merit.
At Trilokpur, District Barabanki, a temple of Pārsvanātha has an octagonal prāsāda with a conical faceted sikhara decked with low alcoves
1 The present author noticed some years back a few fragmentary Jaina sculptures including a female deity of about the tenth century lying in a field at Dwarahat. An inscription of 983, referring to some arjika, has also been found at this place. Cf. Annual Report of Indian Epigraphy 1958-59, no. 383.
ying in a field
arsika, has also
Pgraphy 1958-59.
m
344
