Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

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

Page 837

338 : SHRI MAHAVIRA JAINA VIDYALAYA GOLDEN JUBILEE VOLUME
creeper."65 These images are of singular iconographic interest. What BHANDARKAR called “Nāga female" is in reality Vidyādevi Vairotyä. The niched figure applied on the middle part of the grille, which wears ornaments and stands in kāyotsarga pose, is none else but Jivantasvāmi Mahåvira. His identification of the nude image may, if correct, be an unusual form of Kşetrapāla, or perhaps it may be an hitherto unknown form of Parśva Yaksa. The central figure on the grille on the south side was, as against the assertion of BHANDARKAR, not the same as the one on the corresponding position on the south. It was a standing figure of Jina Mahāvira and not of Jivantasvāmi.65a The female figure bearing a discus is of course Yakşi Cakreśvari. And what BHANDARKAR calls Brahmā must be identified as Brahmaśānti Yakşa. A mediaeval iconographer would have been simply displeased with the sculptor who indicated the presence of the divinities with such an economy of arms and attributes. He would even have dismissed the mount altogether in most cases. That gave his chisel a freedom, often denied, to turn his figures into living, pulsating, smoothly swaying male and female bodies of extraordinary beauty with round, finely formed faces radiating an inner glow of bliss and compassion. They are, or rather they were66, the greatest masterpieces of chiseling of their age in all Western India. Sculptors of the stature and vision of the Sewadi class are rare to meet in the Middle Ages in India.
The superstructure of the Gūdhamandapa, if it ever existed, has disappeared in antiquity. BHANDARKAR thought that “....the outside walls of the gūdha-mandapa or closed hall and the garbhagsha or sanctum, though old, are evidently rebuilt.”67 This deduction does not stand scrutiny since both the structures are original, retouched though here and there.
The Trika possesses eight free standing pillars, octagonal below and polygonal and round above. They are sparsely decorated. The hamsa-yugmas shown on the jādya-kumbha of the base of the pillars at once remind us of a similar decoration on the kumbha of the mandovara of the tenth century temples in Mewad, Navalakhā Pārsvanātha temple at Pali, and Siva temple at Kotai in Kutch. The pillars themselves
65 BHANDARKAR (1908), p. 53. 65a These grilled balconies have been very recently replaced by pillared
porticos. 66 Of late they were coloured, and retouched also. 67 BHANDARKAR (1908), p. 53.