Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

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

Page 840

SOME EARLY JAINA TEMPLES IN WESTERN INDIA : 341
ardent patrons of Jainism as we have noticed earlier. Hathundi is hardly 15 kms. south of Sewadi as against the distance of some 50 kms. of Nadol to its north. Sewadi, for certain, went in the hands of Cāhamănas of Nadol. But that must have happened in the latter half of the eleventh century on the strength of the inscription of 1116. When Sewadi temple was founded, a little after 1000, it was very probably in the hands of Hathundi rulers who just two decades back gave protection of the aforementioned royalties. Judging from the size of the temple a royal founder is within the range of probability. Could Răstrakūța Mammața of Hastikundi have his hands in its erection particularly when the stylistic influence of Nadựula on this temple is merely marginal ?
VI ADINATHA TEMPLE, NADLAI
Nadlai was a twin to Nadol, the capital of the Cāhamănas who branched off from the main line of the Cahamānas of Sākambhari sometime in the middle of tenth century. Nadlai seems to have derived from Nadquladāgikā mentioned in the inscription of 1137 in the Adinātha temple. With its picturesque tors and valley, dotted and capped by six Jaina temples and a few others in the town nestled beside the main hill which includes the largest one--the Adinātha templeNadlai unfolds to the visitor one of the finest scenic views known in Western India.
The Adinātha temple, originally dedicated to Mahāvira as attested by older inscriptions in the temple, has, behind its erection, a not very happy legend, one that reveals an unhealthy rivalry between the Brahmanists and the Jainas.69 The rival Brahmanical shrine of Tapeśvara and the Jaina temple in question do certainly betray strong similarity of style, so much so that the guilds which built the two shrines-the oldest in the town-must have come from the same style-area which, incidentally, does not seem to be Nadol but Khetaka or Khed in Marumandala as recorded in tradition and endorsed by the style of old monumental relics at Khed itself.
The Adinātha temple seems to have been built in great haste as apparent by the slipshod chiseling, stunted pillars, almost unadorned walls and artless articulation of its component parts. Lāvanyasamaya
69 SHAH, AMBALAL PREMCHAND (1953), pp. 222-23. BHANDARKAR too
takes note of the legend (vide 'Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, Western Circle' 1909, p. 42).