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The Followers of the Ever Growing One
and highly respected in the saṁgha. The references to the texts copied for them gives us an idea of the spirituality which inspired them and the type of worship they offered day by day. Among the Digambaras this worship is very elaborate, although their temples, by contrast, are generally very plain, particularly as regards images of the arhats. Herein is a contradiction, which is to be explained in part by the adoption, in the course of centuries, of external elements into their worship-forms and devotion and by the integration of them into already existing patterns.
There remain to be mentioned the cave-temples of Elāpura, all Digambara,218 which form part of this extraordinarily rich and magnificent complex of architecture and sculpture. Among the images of arhats and of yakṣas and yakṣis, including Ambikā Mātā, one discovers in a bas-relief below-the figure of Parsvanatha, representations of a muni and an āryikā in meditative pose.? 219
211
218 Cf. Pereira, 1977.
219 Cf. Fisher & Jain, 1977; fig. 37 of the 'little Kailaś'a, dated circa IXth c.
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