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MEDIÆVAL JAINISM be out of place to recount here. Prominent among these are those relating to the construction of temples, statues, and image worship. It has been surmised that the Saivites of the Tamil land borrowed the custom of having a niche in their great temples for every one of the sixty-three Nāyanārs or Saiva devotees, after the manner of the Jainas who worshipped their twenty-four Tirthankaras in their basadis. This imitation of Jaina mode of worship seems to have come, especially after Appar and the great Tirujñānasambandhar, when a pe. riod of miracles and piety was inaugurated and the Tamil country was studded with temples.
In Karnāțaka, too, the Jainas were primarily responsible for the architectural greatness of the Kannadigas. It is not unlikely that the perfection to which the Hoysala architecture attained, especially in the matter of the construction of temples, has really to be traced to those early days of Jaina ascendency in Karnātaka, when the Jainas gave expression to their sense of expansion and permanence in their statues, temples, and pillars which contain in them so much of delicacy of detail coupled with depth of devotion, and simplicity of style with grandeur of vision.2 Three huge monolithic colossi of Gommaţa exist ; one at śravana Belgola, as we have already scen above, the second at Kārkaļa, and the third at Veņūru, both in Tuļuva. Of these the one at Kārkaļa (41 feet 5 inches in height) was built in A.D. 1432 by Vira Pāņdya, a ruler of that city, and that at Vēņūru in A.D.
1. Ramaswami, Studies, pp. 77-78.
2. One of the most beautiful Hoysala temples is that of Hoysaleśvara in Haļebid. Rice, My. & Coorg, p. 193. The Annual Reports of the Mysore Archæological Survey contain full details of most of the Hoysala temples.
