Temple of Satrunjaya

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 63

VI
SATRUNJAYA HILL
From Palitana to the foot of the hill there is a very straight and level
stretch of broad clean road, lined on either side with Banian or Bar trees, and other species of the ficus tribe. It has at intervals kund and reservoirs and wells, of pure water, excavated by Jaina votaries. At the foot of the hill, the ascent begins with a wide flight of steps, guarded on either side by a statue of an elephant. At this place there are many little canopies or cells, a foot and half to three feet square, open only in front, and each having in its floor a marble slab carved with the representation, in bas relief, of the soles of two feet (carana)—very flat ones—and generally with the toes all of one length. A little behind where the ball of the great toe ought to be, there is a diamond-shaped mark, divided into four smaller figures by two cross lines, from the end of one of which a waved line is drawn to the front of the foot. Round the edges of the slab there is usually an inscription in Devanagari characters. These cells are numerous all the way up the hill, and a large group of them is found on the south-west corner of it behind the temple of Adisvara Bhagavan: these are the temples erected by poorer Sravakas or Jainas, who, unable to afford the expenses of a complete temple, with its hall and sanctuary enshrining a marble mūrti or image, manifest their devotion to their creed by erecting these miniature temples over the carana of their Jinas or Arhats.
"A little way up the hill is a bisāno or halting place for the pilgrims, rendered sacred by the pădukā or footsteps of Bharata, the eldest son of Adinatha. Still a little farther, we reach a fountain called Iccha, of excellent water, alike sanctified by the padukā of Neminatha. About four hundred yards beyond is a second resting place, with a fountain excavated by command of Kumarapala, King of Anahilawada, close to which is a shrine dedicated to Hinglaj Mata, the Hindu Hecate. Thence, and nearly half-way up the hill, is a third bisāno, of greater space than any in the ascent, and termed, after its reservoir, the Silla kund, having a small garden and a series of steps to increase the fall of a miniature cascade. This spot is deemed especially holly."
Still farther up we reach “the sthān of the six sons of Devaki (the mother of Krsna), slain by Kansa,...which fate Krsna only escaped by flight to Dvaraka. The temple is hypaethral, consisting simply of
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