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great Pampāpati temple, is significantly called the Héma-Kütam or the Golden Group.189 There is also not a more picturesque spot in the vicinity than that chosen and occupied by the Jainas at Sravaņa Belgoļa, their first colony in the South. Mūļbidre, in South Kanara, their last stronghold, is thus described by Walhouse in his matchless style :--'No Cistercian brotherhood was wiser in choosing a dwelling place than the Jainas. Their villages are ever marked by natural beauty and convenience. This one named Müdbidré is in a slight hollow on the verge of a wide rolling plain, covered after the rains with vast expanses of tall grass between flat lined elevations which are often studded with beds of a light blue gentian. The village is embowered in fruit and flower-trees and intersected by a labyrinth of hollow ways or lanes worn deep by the rains and tread of generations. Rough steps ascending to a covered entrance like a lynch-gate lead up to the houses that stand back among the trees. The banks and walls built of laterite blocks black with age are shrouded with creeping plants, azure convolvuli, and a profusion of delicate ferns sprouting from every crevice, and words are wanting to describe the exquisite varieties of grasses that wave everywhere on walls and roofs. Bird-of-paradise plumes, filmiest gossamer, wisps of delicate-spun glass, hardly equal in fairy fineness the pale green plumy tufts that spring in unregarded loveliness after the monsoon. Shade and seclusion brood over the peaceful neigh bourhood, and in the midst stand the greatest of Jain temples built nearly five centuries ago. ' 180
189 Ibid., pp. 25-6. 190 Walhouse, cited by Sturrock, op. cit., pp. 87-8.
