Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 744

MÅLĂ DEVI TEMPLE AT GYARASPUR : 269
minor niches, there being thus a total of six niches on the north and south. Each major niche also has a niche on the basement mouldings. The main niche on the south shows a seated Tirthankara. The main niche on the north is missing but one of the major niches shows Cakreśvari Yakşi.
CONCLUSION The mature decorative and architectectural motifs combined with the fairly developed iconography of this temple would indicate a late ninth century date for this building which marks the culmination of the Pratihāra architectural style of central India.
Like the Bajra Math of Gyaraspur, this temple was hitherto supposed to have been originally a Brahmanical temple, later appropriated for Jaina worship. It was erroneously believed that the loose Jaina images, of which there is a plethora in this temple, were all planted here, as in the Bajra Math. Even if the testimony of the loose Jaina images be discounted, the overwhelming evidence of the builtin images outlined below, leaves no doubt that it was a Jaina temple :
(1) Except for a frieze showing Ganesa, Virabhadra, and the Seven Mothers occurring in the interior, there is a complete absence of purely Brahmanical deities. There are reasons to believe that Ganesa and the Seven Mothers had lost their exclusive sectarian character in the mediaeval period.
(2) Jinas are prominently represented on the architraves of the doorways of the sanctum and the inner ambulatory.
(3) Yakşi Cakreśvari occurs conspicuously on the lalăța-bimba of the mandapa doorway. This is extremely significant.
(4) Cakreśvari-and-Ambikā Yaksis and seated Jina figures occur in niches on the roof-pediments of the mandapa in the north as well as in the south faces.
(5) The built-in niches in the deep recesses flanking the bhadras of the sanctum façade invariably show representations of Dharanendra Yaksa and Padmāvati Yaksi.
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