Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

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

Page 786

SOME EARLY JAINA TEMPLES IN WESTERN INDIA : 307
We spoke of the three architectural styles, an acquaintance with which must forego the description of the monuments we have in mind. The first two styles—prevailing from the latter half of eighth century to the end of tenth century-precede in time to the third one; by their wedding, the first two acted as parents to the third style which was born at the dawn of eleventh century and which thenceforth became the legacy to and gained currency in the whole of Western India.
With the awareness of the existence of these three styles, and their inter-relationships finding a broad but sure definition, there arises a problem of denomination of each single style in question. The vāstuśāstras, those indispensable codes of structural rules, had little conception of regional styles; they were concerned, primarily and to the last, with the modes of temples and, at most, with their regional distribution. Hence, on this premise, no guidance is available through their agencies; hence we are obliged to look to other sources. That had been done, unconsciously, by scholars through half a century in India : to apply dynastic labels to art styles, a workable expedient, it was thought, in the domain particularly of the sculptural art. But that approach overemphasizes the role of political history, oversimplifies the cultural currents, and, underestimates, sometimes even ignores, the potential of the indigenous area elements' entrenched deeply in the soil of a given region. The causative factors of a style are, generally speaking, complex; it would be erroneous to reduce them to a few, watertight, rigid rudiments which tend to refer everything to the impact of and initiation by the ruling dynasties and their matrimonial relations. The words which can have a strong pertinence to what we said, have come, now, to us through an authority to whose august office all the information on the current researches on Indian art and archaeology pivots, and whose perception has the subtle facility of an electron microscope to penetrate. “It may be agreed that the dynastic appellations are more convenient stylistic labels to denote certain classes of art products. Even then, the inherent difficulties of dynastic groupings....will remain. Perhaps a more logical, if arduous, way would be to isolate the elements of individual dated art-products and thereafter examine the spatial and temporal spread of these elements. The groups that will emerge after this examination may then be named after the region and period of their currency. In such stylistic groupings, the groups should be given stylistic and not dynastic labels. " 31
31 GHOSH, A., Some Observations on Dynastic Appellations, Seminar on
Indian Art', 1962, Lalit Kalā Akademi, pp. 9-13.