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CHAPTER 25]
NORTH INDIA
and a bracketed base (plate 225). Stylistically, it shows the impact of the Lucknow style of architecture, and hence it can be ascribed to a period posterior to the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The image of Pārsvanatha, however, is somewhat older.
Vārāṇasi is well-known to the Jainas as the birth-place of Parsvanatha. The temple at Bhelupura, believed to mark the actual birth-spot of the Tirthankara, is stated to date during the period of Akbar, as a text dated in the Vikrama year 1619 refers to it. But structurally the present temple, which is built in the degenerated late Mughal style is of a much later period. There is a good collection of late medieval Jaina sculptures in this temple (plate 226).
The Jaina shrines of Agra, Sauripura and Firozabad also bear collections of medieval images including those of precious stones, but structurally they are just ordinary in character and in most cases have retained only a few original features owing to heavy repairs and additions. The same is the case with the famous Lal-Mandir in Delhi which is dated to 1656. The construction of another Jaina temple of Delhi was commenced in 1800 by Rājā Harsukh Rai at Dharmapura and was completed in the later part of the nineteenth century.
Jaina images belonging from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries are found in the later shrines of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. These are mostly crude and lifeless.
13 Balabhadra Jain (ed.), Bharat ke Digambara Jaina Tirtha, I, Bombay, 1974, p. 129.
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