Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

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

Page 789

310 SHRI MAHAVIRA JAINA VIDYALAYA GOLDEN JUBILEE VOLUME
geographic sense implicit in the term has to be more specific when cultural meaning is attached to it. For our purpose, it includes two provinces, Rajasthan and Gujarat only. Paranagar in the North, Parol near Bombay 5, Osia and Kiradu on the western-most and Badoli on the eastern extremity are its precise territorial limits as defined by the art-styles.
Within the ambit of this definition, Maharashtra remains excluded from Western India. Some scholars include the Deccan in Western India. The Deccan itself, according to these authorities, include Kunkaņa (Konkan) as well as Kuntala. But Kuntala, along with Karṇāța, belong culturally with Southern India. If the Deccan means modern Maharashtra, and Maharashtra had, as its heart, the Seunadeśa of the mediaeval period, it does not form, as judged from its art and architecture, the part of Western India but stands midway between Mälava and Kuntala, possessing at most a few links with Gujarat. The linguistic and racial patterns together with historical happenings and geographical factors, plus the art and architecture draw Rajasthan and Gujarat very close, into one harmonious whole which corresponds with the western part of the subcontinent. Since half a century now, Gujarat has been changing its visage faster than Rajasthan, true. But in the times to which we refer, the bond of unity was much stronger, the equivocality of culture, much harmonical, than would seem on the surface today.
Together Rajasthan and Gujarat cover a vast, extensive surface area; which precludes absolute homogeneity despite unity, of cultural expression, or for that matter, of the architectural style. There were, in fact, four distinct styles of temple architecture. The style, the examples of which are the oldest6-the Saurashtra style-was confined to lower Saurashtra and western Kutch exclusively this severe style has its own independent story of evolution as well as of degeneration" and has in fact contributed nothing to the development of the fourth style.
34 As indicated by the old Siva temple there.
35 Parol is at present in Maharashtra State. The old temple here, of early eleventh century, is a perfect representative of the contemporaneous architectural style of Gujarat.
36 These have been discussed in details by J. M. NANAVATI and the present author in their monograph titled The Maitraka and the Saindhava Temples of Gujarat' now in press with 'Artibus Asiae'. 37 Ibid,