Another red coat and yellow turban came, and the three guided us around the two Jain temples, which are the most elaborately carved and decorated shrines in India. They were built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the marble was brought from quarries twelve miles away and carved to frost- and lace-like fineness.
Marble cloisters whose alcove chapels contain seated images of the tirthankars, or Jain saints, surround an inner court holding the elaborately constructed and decorated central shrine and altar. One marvels as much at the perfect preservation as at the minute, lavish ornamentation; and for the preservation the Rajputs have to thank the English. In the central domical halls of both temples the columns, arches, struts, trusses, beams, central panels, and altar-fronts are covered with myriads of tiny figures and bands of conventional ornament in full and low relief, a marble filigree-work surpassing anything to be seen elsewhere. Scenes from the lives of the saints frame the niches holding their images; wonderful rosettes and pendentives enrich the ceilings; and saints by the meter band the columns and walls until one feels hypnotized by the myriad repetitions. Leaf forms suggest the Greek acanthus, while the Buddhist swastika, elephant, lotus, and Hansa goose appear, and a whole grammar of Indian ornament can be traced in those halls, where the white saints sit absorbed in eternal meditation. At the first temple fifty-five saints sit in as many cells around the court, and a coolie was dusting the images as indifferently as if they were
