History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c24.15

v2.c24.15

There are few of the problems connected with this branch of our subject so obscure and so puzzling as those connected with the early history of the architecture of the Jains. This style, always singularly chaste and elegant, was essentially Hindû, and was doubtless largely common to all Hindû sects in western India, but in its evolution it became modified by Jaina taste and requirements. And, the Brâhmans in turn, through the influence of the workmen, gradually accepted most of the stylistic improvements of their rivals. This seems to have been more especially the case in Gujarât and Râjputâna, where the Jains were very numerous and influential, and we might almost with equal propriety designate their style of architecture as a Western Hindû style; but this would lead to the inclusion of examples of greater diversity, and interfere with clearness of treatment. When we first practically meet with it in the early part of the 11th century at Âbû, or at Girnâr, it is a style complete and perfect in all its parts, evidently the result of long experience and continuous artistic development. From that point it progresses during one or two centuries towards greater richness, but in doing so loses the purity and perfection it had attained at the earlier period, and from that culminating point its downward progress can be traced through abundant examples to the present day.