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Description of Temples
showing series of full-blown lotuses at their soffit (Plate 170). The pair of the dwarf front pillars of the mukhacatuskī of the balānaka which stand further behind at the extreme north, hold a torana of the andola class (Plate 167), the type introduced at least from c. late tenth century in lower western India and was commonly used in Jaina as well as Brahmanical buildings of the subsequent centuries.
The pillars of the upper storey of the Meghanāda mandapa are dwarf and, unlike the vedī-kaksāsana complex there, largely unornamented (Plates 174, 175). Hall's magnificent central Sabhāmandāraka ceiling (Plates 176, 177) they support is c. 20 ft. 6 in. in diameter. It is thus the largest of all in the Kumbhāriyā temple-halls. Among its receding and stratified courses, after the relatively plain karņadardarikā, comes the rūpakantha bearing 16 vidyadhara-brackets, the space between the brackets is at points filled with Jinas adored on either side by an elephant, a motif which will recur in the ceilings of a couple of subsequent temples in Prabhāsa, Saurāṣtra, the ceilings of which are now to be seen in the town's Djāmi' and Māipurī mosques. In the rūpakantha here are also shown astamangalas and possibly the Kalyānakas of the Jina. Above the rūpakantha is a course of gajatālu followed by a narapattikā depicting the pañcakalyāņakas of the Jina. The inclusion of narapattikā, as in the Pārsvanātha temple here, and aesthetically not very comforting, will be reported within a decade and a half in the great ceiling (23 ft. 6 in.) of the rangamandapa in marble (c. A.D. 1145-50) built by minister Pșthvīpāla, in the Adinātha temple (Vimala-vasahī) at Delvādā on Mt. Ābu. After this belt, once more comes a band of gajatālu, next the three strata of the conjoined catuṣkhandā-kolas in receding order, and finally a well-integrated sapta-kolaja lambana-pendant (Plate 178, 179). The ceiling, by virtue of its larger dimensions, is doubtless impres-sive; but its effect could have been further enhanced by providing a circle of lūmās or pendantives around the central lambana-pendant as in the Vimala temple parallel and in fact many more examples of the ceilings of the 12th and the 13th century Jaina temples. The contours of the mouldings as well as architectural details of the entire ceiling were lightly painted with brown, black, and reddish pigments, apparently in the 17th century (Plates 177, 178) when the temple was reconsecrated in A.D. 1619. Its yellowed marble made the ceiling look like a carved and painted piece of ivory. (Recently, however, the paint has been rubbed out, and gone with it is its charming patina.) The central octagon which leaves four triangular depressions at four corners of the nave, are in each instance, filled with a large grāsa-head.
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