Temple of Satrunjaya

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

Page 66

But apart from the poetical exaggeration of this, it is truly a wonderful, unique place, a city of temples,--for, except a few tanks, there is nothing else within the gates. Through court beyond court the visitor proceeds over smooth pavements of grey cunām, visiting temple after temple-most of them built of stone quarried near Gopnath, but a few of marble; all elaborately sculptured, and some of striking proportions. And, as he passes along, the glassy-eyed images of pure white marble, seem to peer out at him from hundreds of cloister cells. Such a place is surely without a match in the world and there is a cleanliness withal about every square and passage, porch and hall, that is itself no mean source of pleasure. The silence too, except at festival seasons, is striking; now and then in the mornings you hear a bell for a few seconds, or the beating of a drum for as short a'time, and on holidays, chants from the larger temples meet your ear, but generally during the after part of the day the only sounds are those of vast flocks of pigeons that rush about spasmodically from the roof of one temple to that of another. Parroquets and squirrels, doves and ringdoves, abound, and peacocks are occasionally met with on the outer walls.
Independently of the more general features of the scene,-"the fashionable shrine, on which at the present day the greatest amount of wealth is lavished", -it must command the special interest of the student of architecture, for, as our greatest authority on the history of this science remarks, “It is now being covered with new temples and shrines which rival the old buildings not only in splendour, but in the beauty and delicacy of their details, and altogether form one of the most remarkable groups to be found anywhere—the more remarkable, if we consider that the bulk of them were erected within the limits of the present century. To the philosophical student of architecture it is one of the most interesting spots on the face of the globe, inasmuch as he can see there the various processes by which cathedrals were produced in the Middle Ages, carried on a larger scale than anywhere else, and in a more natural manner. It is by watching the methods still followed in designing buildings in that remote locality that we become aware how it is that the uncultivated Hindu can rise in architecture to a degree of originality and perfection which has not been attained in Europe since the Middle Ages."122
The top of the hill consists of two ridges, running nearly east and west, and each about three hundred and eighty yards in length. The southern ridge is higher at the western end than the northern one, but it, in turn, is higher at the eastern extremity. Both ridges and the buildings that fill the valley between are surrounded by battlemented walls fitted
128
Fergusson, History of Architecture (ed. 1867), Vol. II. pp. 630-632.