Temple of Satrunjaya

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

Page 65

picture—this work of human toil we have reached. Just under the brow of the hill to the north, surrounded by clumps of trees, is the town of Palitana, and in all directions the eye wanders over a vast plain, with gentle undulations here and there, and declining away to the east and south-east; generally it is cultivated, though not nearly to the extent it admits of. At intervals the eye falls on groups of umbrageous trees, from beside which peep out the temples and huts of many a village. To the east, the prospect extends to the Gulf of Khambhat about Ghogo and Bhavnagar; to the north it is bounded by the granite range of Sihor and the Chamardi peak: to the north-west and west the plain extends as far as the eye can reach, except where broken in the far distance due west by the summits of Mount Girnar-revered alike by Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina—the latter of whom claim it as sacred to Neminatha, their twenty-second Tirthankaia, whom they represent as having after seven hundred years austerities, become fit to leave this and all worlds on yonder six peaked mountain, at some date in the far past that would astonish even a geologist. From west to east, like a silver ribbon, across the foreground to the south, winds the Satrunjaya120 river, which the eye follows until it is lost between the Talaja and Khokara hills in the south-west.
The nearer scene on the hill itself is thus described by the author of the Rās Mālā: "Street after street, and square after square", he says, "extend these shrines of the Jaina faith, with their stately enclosurers, half palace, half fortress, raised in marble magnificence upon the lonely and majestic mountain, and like the mansions of another world, far removed in upper air from the ordinary tread of mortals. In the dark recesses of each temple, one image or more of Adinatha, of Ajita, or of some other Tirthankaras, is seated, whose alabaster features, wearing an expression of listless repose, are rendered dimly visible by the faint light shed from silver lamps; incense perfumes the air, and barefootted, with noiseless tread, upon the polished floors, the female votaries, glittering in scarlet and gold, move round and round in circles, chanting forth their monotonous, but not unmelodious, hymns. Satrunjaya indeed might fitly represent one of the fancied hills of eastern romance, the inhabitants of which have been instantaneously changed into marble, but which fairy hands are ever employed upon, burning perfumes, and keeping all clean and brilliant, while fairy voices haunt the air in these voluminous praises of the Devas."121
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Dr. Wilson thinks this is the river mentioned by Ptolemy under the designation of Codrana or Sodrana. Jour. Bomb. Br. R. Asiat. Soc., Vol. III. pt. ji. pp. 88,89; Ptol. Geog., lib. vii Forbes, Ras Mala, Vol. I. pp. 7,8.
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