The Heart of Jainism/Chapter 15
The earliest Jaina architects seem to have used wood as their chief building material: it was easily obtained and very suitable for use in a tropical country; but one quality it conspicuously lacked, that of durability, and the earliest Jaina buildings have all disappeared as completely as the early wooden churches in Ireland.
The habit of using wood, however, left to subsequent Jaina architecture some notable legacies, one of which can be seen in the exquisite fineness of the carvings in the interior of Jaina temples, tracery so delicate that it seems almost incredible it can have been carried out in so stubborn a medium as stone; whilst another legacy is to be found in the many-curved strut that sustains Jaina arches and seems to have taken its origin from the wooden support of a timber arch.
Stūpa.But if the hand of time robbed Jainism of its wooden treasures, the lack of knowledge on the part of early scholars, which accredited all stūpa and all cave-temples to Buddhists, robbed Jainism for a time also of its earliest surviving monuments. It is only recently, only in fact since students of the past have reahzed how many symbols, such as the wheel, the rail, the rosary, the Svastika, &c., the Jaina had in common with the Buddhists and Brāhmans, that its early sites and shrines have been handed back to Jainism. The importance of accuracy in this respect is enhanced by the fact that in its architecture we have an almost perfect record of Jaina history enshrined in loveliness.
Jaina and Buddhist art must have followed much the same course, and the former like the latter erected stūpa with railings round them in which to place the bones of their saints. But such has been the avidity with which everything possible has been claimed as Buddhist, that as yet only two stūpa[1] are positively admitted to be of Jaina origin. One of these was discovered by Dr. Führer on the Kaṅkāli mound near Mathurā, that centre of Jaina influence, and dates from the Satrap period, and another at Rāmnagar near Bareilly.
Dr. Burgess[2] gives the following account of the construction of a stūpa built on the Aśoka pattern about 200 B.C.:
‘On a low circular drum, a hemispherical dome was constructed, with a procession path round the latter, and over the dome a box-like structure surmounted by an umbrella and surrounded by a stone railing. Round the drum was an open passage for circumambulation, and the whole was enclosed by a massive rail with gates on four sides.’
It is interesting to notice that even now after the passage of twenty-one hundred years, circumambulation (pradakṣiṇā) plays an important part in Jaina temple worship, and to sit for ever under an umbrella is the highest privilege of their Tīrthaṅkara.
Cave-temples.Of about the same date as the stūpa were the Jaina cave excavations containing ċaitya caves for worship and also caves for the monks to live and sleep in. The Jaina ċaitya were not as big as the Buddhist, for their religion did not necessitate the calling of such large assemblies; but in other respects the resemblance between them was so strong that like the stupa they were all placed to the credit of the Buddhists. The wonderful caves in Junāgaḍh, for instance, with their traces of beautiful carving, are certainly Jaina, and now that the State is for the time under British administration, it is to be hoped that such thorough excavations may be carried out as will throw light on many disputed points.
Dr. Fergusson[3] also numbers amongst Jaina caves of the second century B.C. those in Orissa, and as of later date those at Bādāmi, Patna, Elūrā and elsewhere.
If only we could trace the development from the earlier wooden structures to the exquisite eleventh-century temples, we should have solved one of the great problems of Jaina history; but we have as yet no material to do so. The blossoming period of Jaina architecture is like the sudden flowering of Flemish art under the Van Eycks: in both cases all the intermediate stages have been swept away by the ravages of time and the devastation of war, and we are abruptly confronted with the perfection of loveliness, whilst the toilsome steps that led up to it are hidden from us.
1. The Golden Age.From this time the story of Jaina architecture is clear, and it seems to fall into four main divisions, the first of which, the golden age, almost corresponds with the Gothic movement on the continent of Europe.
The plan of the temples of this period is somewhat similar: each has an open porch (maṇḍapa), a closed hall of assembly (sabhā maṇḍapa), and an inner shrine or cell (gabhāro) in which the idol is kept. The whole is surrounded by a closed courtyard carrying on its inner wall numerous separate cells, each with its own small image of a Tīrthaṅkara. The temple is surmounted by a pyramidal roof, often ending in the representation of a water-pot, and only the carving on this pyramid (or Śikhara) as it appears over the temple wall gives any hint of the rich beauty enclosed within the courtyard. The inner shrine is usually guarded by richly carved doorways; the idol itself (nude and blind in the case of Digambara and with loin-cloth and staring glass eyes in the case of Śvetāmbara temples) is of no artistic merit; the sabhā maṇḍapa has very little carving, and is only too often defaced by vulgar decorations and hideous glass globes, but the outer portico (the maṇḍapa) is a very fairyland of beauty, the fineness of whose carving is only equalled by the white tracery of hoar-frost. From the dome of this porch hang pendants of marble, whose workmanship dims the memory of the stairway of Christ Church and the roof of the Divinity School in Oxford, and gives the spectator a new standard of beauty. The many pillars that support the dome are all so perfectly carved, that the element of ‘control’ is never lost, and the many curved struts between the pillars recall the days when the Jaina wrought their dreams in wood. No description can give the reader any idea of the dainty elaboration of the carving in white marble: indeed the learner needs to pass many times from the blinding glare of a dusty Indian day into the cool whiteness of these shrines and surrender himself to the beauty and stillness of the place, ere he can hope to unravel half their wealth of legends in stone.
We know that the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the zenith of Jaina prosperity. Not only were kings reckoned amongst the most ardent disciples of this faith, but great wealth poured into the community; and as this acquisition of power and wealth coincided with a time of real religious fervour, it is not surprising that there followed a marvellous epoch of temple-building, in spite of occasional outbursts of fierce persecution. Mount Ābu, bearing on its bosom shrines that are marvels of fretted loveliness, the frowning rock of Girnār crowned with its diadem of temples, and Śatruñjaya in its surpassing holiness, half fortress and half temple-city, bear witness to the fervour of those days, when, for example, even the masons after completing the work for which they were paid on Mount Ābu voluntarily erected another temple as a free-will offering, which is called to this day the Temple of the Artificers.
It has already been pointed out that this the golden age of Jaina temple-building in India is also the period of the great Gothic cathedrals of Lincoln, Salisbury and Wells in England, and of Amiens, Rheims and Chartres in France. Both styles show a complete control of the principle of vaulting and a marvellous inventiveness in the wealth of detail with which the interiors are decorated.
2. Under the shadow of Islam.The Mohammedans found in the Jaina temples not only quarries from which to steal ready-made the pillars for their mosques, but as it were garments for the expression of religion that could be ‘made over’ for their use. As easily as an elder sister’s clothes are cut up and altered for the use of the younger, so conveniently were Jaina temples transformed for the appropriation of this newest arrival on the Indian scene. All that the victorious Mohammedans had to do was to make slight structural alterations.
‘By removing the principal cell and its porch from the centre of the court, and building up the entrances of the cells that surround it, a courtyard was at once obtained, surrounded by a double colonnade, which always was the typical form of a mosque. Still one essential feature was wanting— a more important side towards Mecca; this they easily obtained by removing the smaller pillars from that side, and re-erecting in their place the larger pillars of the porch, with their dome in the centre; and, if there were two smaller domes, by placing one of them at each end.’[4]
No original mosque the Mohammedans ever erected rivalled these ‘made-over’ temples for beauty. In the zenith of their prosperity Jaina architects had taught Hindu builders much; now in adversity they still influenced their persecutors, and the still too-little-known mosques of Aḥmadābād owe more of their unrivalled beauty to Jaina inspiration than to any other source.
But the Jaina did not only teach; like true scholars, they also learnt even from their opponents, and it is to the blending of the pure Jaina style with Mughal features that we owe modern Jaina architecture. The present writer was shown both at Ābu and Śatruñjaya on the interior of the roof of the temple courtyard miniature representations of Mohammedan tombs, which she was assured had been placed there to guard the shrines from the iconoclastic zeal of the conquerors. This, however, was only a small matter compared to the other modifications due to Mohammedan influence that were to follow.
3. Modern
Jaina
architec-
ture. When the Mohammedan tyranny was overpast, the natural outcome of Jaina belief in the merit of building temples again showed itself in the erection of new shrines on the old sites, in additions to the temple cities, and also in the buildings that may still be seen in such places as Sonāgarh and Mukhtagiri, The peace and prosperity that have followed the establishment of British rule in India have led to an unprecedented outburst of temple-building; and all these shrines, whether erected in the sixteenth or in the nineteenth century, have so many characteristics in common, that they may be grouped together as modern. The pointed pyramidical roof is seldom seen, and the true Jaina dome is superseded by the Mughal, and the openings are now usually the foliated pointed arch which the Mohammedans introduced. The style, too, though rich and ornate, has lost much of its original eleventh-century purity.
Perhaps one distinct gain may be chronicled that is seen at its best in a Jaina temple in Delhi, namely, the filling in of the space behind the strut with beautiful pierced work, that makes the whole resemble a bracket supporting the arch.
On the debit side, however, there must be recorded the terrible vulgarity that often disfigures modern Jaina temples and is seen at its worst in places like the temple city of Pālitāṇā, where the older buildings throw the modern craze for crude colour washing and paintings into terrible relief. Perhaps the most famous of the modern temples is that erected by Śeṭha Haṭṭhisiṁha in Aḥmadābād in 1848, where despite all the beauty of its carving one still longs for the more austere loveliness of the earlier fanes. The old 'Gothic' days seem to have passed now into an over-elaborated period of mixed styles.
4. Southern India
The Jaina architecture of the south forms a class apart; it has three chief divisions. First, temples (Bastī) that possess shrine, assembly hall and porch, like similar buildings in the north of India, but with more ornate outer walls. Secondly, open-air courtyards (Betta) containing images not of any of the orthodox Tīrthaṅkara of the north, but of Gōmata or Gomateśvara, a Digambara saint unknown in northern India. (It is to this saint that the famous colossi of the south are dedicated. The best known of these is that at Śrāvaṇa Belgolā in Mysore, which, cut from a single block of gneiss, stands some fifty-seven feet high; others are to be found at Yenūr and Kārkala in South Kanara.) The third class of temples is found in Kanara, and with their Venetian blinds they curiously recall the house of some European official, but their general style and especially their reversed eaves resemble the buildings of Nepāl.
Another feature of note in Southern Jaina architecture is the stambha or pillar. In Ābu the custodian of a temple drew the writer's attention to a stambha within the enclosure and explained that no temple was complete without one. But the Ābu pillar was plain indeed compared to the lavishly carved stambha that are to be found in the south. At Mūdabidri a most interesting question is raised by the presence on the bottom of these pillars of the curious interlaced basket-work pattern familiar in Irish manuscripts and on Irish crosses.
'It is equally common in Armenia, and can be traced up the valley of the Danube into central Europe; but how it got to the west coast of India we do not know, nor have we, so far as I know, any indication on which we can rely for its introduction. There was at all times for the last fifteen centuries a large body of Christians established on this coast who were in connection with Persia and Syria, and are so now. It would be strange, indeed, if it were from them the Jains obtained this device.'[5]
May not this symbol from the ancient crosses now so strangely found in the very centre of a Jaina temple be a prophecy of the coming of the spring?
Jainism has produced so vast and varied a literature, that we can mention here only the leading periods of activity and the languages used.
All the books of the Canon are in Ardha-Māgadhī, the vernacular spoken by Mahāvīra and his monks, which thus became the sacred language of Jainism.
All early commentaries on the Jaina Canon and a good deal of the secular poetry composed by Jaina are in what is known as Jaina-Mahārāṣṭrī, a vernacular closely allied to early Marāṭhī.
After the Christian era Sanskrit gradually won its way to the place of lingua franca in North India. It was generally used in inscriptions and in royal proclamations; and literary men of all the religions employed it in preference to other tongues, because it alone was understood by cultured men everywhere. This explains the existence of a great body of Buddhist literature in Sanskrit. The Jaina were rather later than others in substituting Sanskrit for their accustomed vernacular, but finally most of their sects also yielded, though in varying degrees. A large part of Jaina Sanskrit literature consists of scholastic and philosophic works connected with the exposition and defence of the faith; but the Jaina also hold a notable place in ordinary literature. They specially distinguished themselves in grammar, lexicography and moral tales. The two northern recensions of the Pañċatantra, for example, show considerable Jaina influence. The work of this period culminates in the activity of Hemaċandra, with whose writings we deal briefly below.
In South India the earliest literary movement was predominately Jaina. In Tamil literature from the earliest times for many centuries Jaina poets held a great place. The Jīvaka Ċintāmaṇi, perhaps the finest of all Tamil poems, is a Jaina work. Eight thousand Jaina, it is said, each wrote a couplet, and the whole when joined together formed the famous Nālaḍiyār. To-day this consists of only four hundred verses, but the discrepancy is accounted for by the action of a hostile monarch who flung the whole multitude of poems into a stream and destroyed all but four hundred particularly good ones! Each of the verses is quite unconnected with the other, but has a most unimpeachable moral, and so they are taught in Tamil schools to this day.
More famous still is the Kurraḷ of Tiruvaḷḷuvar, the masterpiece of Tamil literature. Its author, an outcaste by birth, is claimed by every sect as belonging to their faith, but Bishop Caldwell 'considers its tone more Jaina than anything else'.[6] In any case it must come from the earliest period. Another name that adds lustre to these times is that of a Jaina lady Avvaiyār 'the Venerable Matron', one of the most admired amongst Tamil poets, who is said to have been a sister of Tiruvaḷḷuvar. Nor was it only amongst the fields of poesy that the Jaina gained renown; a famous old dictionary and the great Tamil grammar are also accredited to them.
Jaina writers also laid the foundations of Telugu literature, and classical Kanarese literature begins with a great succession of Jaina poets and scholars. The period of their greatest activity runs from the eighth to the twelfth century.
But the greatest of all Jaina writers was undoubtedly Hemaċandra, He was born in Dhandukāa near Aḥmadābād in A. D. 1088 of Jaina parents, his real name being probably Ċāṅgadeva. His mother dedicated him to the religious life under the care of a monk named Devaċandra, who took him to Cambay, where he was eventually ordained, receiving the new name of Somaċandra. In Cambay he studied logic, dialectics, grammar and poetry, and proved himself a past master in every branch of study he took up. Hemaċandra's chance came when he was appointed spokesman of the Jaina community at Aṇhilvāḍa Pāṭaṇa to welcome the great Ċaulukya king, Jayasiṁha Siddharāja, on his return from a famous victory in Mālwā. His poem won the king's heart, and he was appointed court paṇḍit and court annalist in the royal capital. There he compiled two lexicons and wrote his famous Prākṛit grammar, with which the learned king was so delighted, that he engaged three hundred copyists for three years to transcribe it, and sent copies all over India. Hemaċandra was just as popular with Jayasiṁha's successor, Kumārapāla, whom, if he did not actually convert to Jainism, he at least persuaded to follow the Jaina rule of non-killing, and to build many temples. During this reign Hemaċandra continued to write a number of science hand-books, lives of Jaina saints, and other works, including a History of Gujarāt and the famous Yoga Śāstra and commentary thereon; and he also found time to instruct many scholars who carried on the literary tradition. (In Aṇhilvāḍa Pāṭaṇa one may still see the ink-stained stone on which Hemaċandra's cushion was placed, and where he dictated his works to his pupils.) About A. D. 1172 Hemaċandra died of self-starvation, in the approved Jaina fashion, shortly before his friend and patron Kumārapāla.
It is astonishing that with such a magnificent record of early writers the Jaina of to-day, despite their educational advantages, should number so few authors of note amongst them; their literary activity seems at present to find its chief outlet in journalism and pamphleteering.[7]
Modern Jaina literature is mostly in Gujarātī, but books in Hindī and in English are also numerous.
- ↑ Imperial Gazetteer, ii. 111.
- ↑ Ibid., ii. 159.
- ↑ J. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, London, 1910, vol. ii, p. 9.
- ↑ Fergusson, loc. cit., ii. 69.
- ↑ Fergusson, ii. 82.
- ↑ Imperial Gazetteer, ii. 435
- ↑ It is interesting and encouraging to notice that out of every possible way of spreading their faith the Jaina have deliberately chosen as the best adapted for Oriental use the now classic methods selected by the great old Christian missionaries (true Tīrthaṅkara) of the past. Thus they have Jaina tracts, Jaina newspapers, Jaina schools and Jaina hostels; each sect has also its own Conference, with its Ladies' Day, and there are even Jaina Young Men's Associations.