the Tirthankaras, the divine heroes of the Jains, except that the sikhara, the ensign of the Sūrya-vamsa, which never appears in Musalman buildings, is wanting. The Gujerāti dynasty, like that of Mewār, was of Rajput descent—Ahmad Shah's grandfather having embraced Islam to save his life—and maintained all the traditions of Rajput culture, so that the Muhammadan architecture of Gujerat is "Saracenic" only in the sense that it is Indo-Aryan architecture adapted to the ritual of Islam.
At Chitor, which was his capital, Kumbhā Rānā built a royal chapel in honour of Vishnu, but the most important one there is named after his Queen, Mirā Bāī (Pl. XIX, a). Like the Khajurāho temple illustrated in Pl. XVI and XVII, it has a covered procession path round the shrine leading from the great assembly-hall, or Sabha-mandapam, with its lotus dome covered externally by a pyramidal roof which differs from those of the Khajurāho temples in being placed diagonally in relation to the front of the shrine. The lofty sikhara crowning the latter is more severe in style than those which crown the royal chapels of the Chandēla dynasty, although it is several centuries later in date; for the royal line of Mewār, proud of its illustrious ancestry, and schooled in a constant struggle for independence, has always maintained its martial traditions and some of the dignified simplicity of early Indo-Aryan court life.
We have seen that the sikhara of a Vishnu temple, symbolically considered, is an architectonic rendering of Vishnu's holy mountain, Merū or Mandara, just as the tower of a Siva temple stands for Kailāsa, Siva's Himālayan mountain. The veneration of mountains has played a part in all religions, and it is quite probable that originally Vishnu and Siva were both personifica-
