Jinamanjari 2000 09 No 22

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 19

Some, Kokasa, Palhana and Dalhana.
Some of these images of the Jinas, seated sāsana devata couples (variously identified as Dharanendra-Padmāvati, AmbikaSarvahana) and upāsakas are related to a distinct iconic tradition which is sui geeris has also been sometimes stressed.?
The Jaina remains are prolific in the region but are scattered as loose sculptures. The Jaina temples at Bilhari, Karitalai, Patyan Dae in Satna district and Bahoridhanda in Jabalpur district were important ones from the region. The temples at Bilhari and Karitalai with their doorframes are still in existence while connected monuments have disappeared now. The ruins of these two temples have been shifted now to Rani Durgavati Museum at Jabalpur and Mahant Ghasidas Museum at Raipur. The Bilhari temple came to prominence architecturally during the time of Nohala, the queen of Yuvarajadeva (915-945 C.E.), and the Patyan Dae and the Bahoridhanda temples were famous during the reign of Laxmanaraja-II (945-70 C.E.).
The existence of a Jain temple at Patyan Dae in Satna district belongs to twelfth C.E. Stylistically, the figures of the Jinas on the doorway lintel and other decorative figures on the doorframe appear to belong to a period when decadence had set in to Dahala art. However, the tenth C.E. image of Ambika from the temple is now in the Allhabad Municipal Museum.
These constructions define the background of building activity which eventually seems to have influenced the content of Jaina art also, for it was a significant part of a whole in which sharp lines of division in respect of stylistic details get blurred. These circumstances also explain as to why in the otherwise wholly Jaina-style images there is often a distinctive iconographic touch which does not conform to the conventional Jaina iconography. A major example of this is to be seen in the Jaina temple of Arang which is an architectural marvel interpreting the bhumija style of architecture usually reserved for Saiva temples. Another example of iconographic adjustments is Hanumantal Jina image (Jabalpur). A Jaina image from Karitalai, now displayed in the Raipur Museum, similarly interprets a variation of the same idiom which is predominant in the Hanumantal image. Stylistically these images conform to the idiom of sculptures of Karitalai and TripuriJabalpur region as a whole.
Sagar and Narasinghpur regions also have several sites abounding in Jaina remains. At Bina-Barha and Ranital in Sagar district there are rich remains exhibiting nine Tirthankara images such as Rşabha, Sambhava, Sāntinātha, etc. and Ambika. There is a pillar, in the compound of City Hall at Narasinghpur, decorated with
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