Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c35.23

c35.23

Connecting the Chandragiri Hill with that of Indrabetta is the Pilgrims Way, which, passing alongside the holy tank of Belgola, ascends the bare hillside by innumerable steps cut in the granite slope to the walled enclosure encircling the summit of Indrabetta. As a contrast to the *bastis* of Chandragiri, this enclosure contains another class of Jain structure, commonly referred to as a *betta*, although this term, on occasion, may also refer to the sacred hill as a whole. The structural *betta* is not a temple in the ordinary sense of this word, but is an open court surrounded by an arcade or cloisters in the centre of which is a statue of one of the Jain divinities. There is nothing of special architectural merit in the design of these bettas, but they are notable as some of them enshrine standing images of exceptional appearance and also of colossal size. Several such statues, each a monolithic production carved out of the living rock, are to be found in the bettas of the Kanara country, as for instance one at Karkala, over forty feet in height and bearing the date A.D. 1432, and another at Yenur, about thirty-five feet high produced much later, having been erected in 1604. But the earliest and most stupendous of all these great figures is the example on the Indrabetta hill depicting Gommata, son of the first of the twenty-four Tirthankars, which is a most astonishing production. This gigantic image stands over fifty-six feet high, (scarcely ten feet less than the height of the Great Sphinx in Egypt), and was carved in situ, during the reign of the Ganga king Rachamalla II, to the order of his minister Chamunda Raya about A.D. 983. The story of its creation is quite clear. Originally the granite outcrop forming the hill was crowned by a conspicuously lofty rock or tor, and it occurred to the imaginative mind of the Jains to fashion this solid block of gneiss into a statue of their saint. Entirely nude, as he is of the Digambara or "sky-clad" sect, and representing the ideal ascetic who stood in abstract meditation while the ant-hills arose at his feet and the creeping plants wound themselves around his limbs, this Indian colossus, in spite of defects in its proportions is profoundly revealing. Through the surge and stress of over a thousand years this solemn and impassive figure has defied the elements, and the high finish of its workmanship still remains. Surely Blake in his "Four Zoas" had visions of such a monumental image when he wrote;