History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c24.s12: Bastîs.
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c24.s12
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Bastîs.
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The principal group of Bastîs of the Jains, above the Ghâts, is that at Sravana Belgola. There are there two hills—the Indragiri, on whose summit the colossal image just described stands, and dominates the plain. On a shoulder of the other, called Chandragiri, stand the Bastîs, fifteen in number. As might be expected from their situation, they are all of the Dravidian style of architecture, and are consequently built in gradually receding storeys, each of which is ornamented with small simulated cells, as was explained above, vol. i., p. 172, and will be more fully described presently. No instance occurs among them of the curvilinear sikhara or spire, which is universal with the northern Jains, except in the instance of Elûrâ above alluded to.
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The following woodcut (No. 302) representing the Châmunda-râya and Sâsana bastîs on the north side of the Chandragiri hill, with the stambha in front of the Pârswanâthaswâmi bastî, conveys an idea of their general external appearance, which is more ornamental than that of the generality of northern Jaina temples. The outer wall of those in the north is quite plain. The southern ones are as frequently ornamented with pilasters and crowned with a row of ornamental cells.¹ The Châmunda-râya temple is the most imposing on the hill, both in style and dimensions, and was probably erected about 1135 A.D. Externally it measures about 70 ft. in length, exclusive of the porch on the east face, by 36 ft. across. Inside is a mandapa, or hall about 28 ft. wide by 29½ ft. deep. The Dravidian mode of roofing does not accept the dome on an octagon, and here a square of four round columns, 8 ft. 4 in. between centres, is surrounded by another of twelve octagonal pillars, 19 ft. between the centres of the corner pillars. Behind the hall is a vestibule about 18 ft. wide by 6 ft. deep, from which the small shrine is entered—surrounded apparently by walls of unusual thickness to support the vimâna or spire.² The temple at the south side of this one is dedicated to Âdîswar, but known as the Sâsana bastî, built about the same time, but which has now lost its sikhara—probably destroyed by the Muhammadans.¹ The fine mâna-stambha, in the foreground, stands in front of the Pârswanâtha-
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¹ The native Government Archæological survey, carried on for many years past, has concerned itself almost exclusively with epigraphy. A few plans and detail drawings have been inserted in the 12 quarto volumes, but descriptive details are few and meagre; while, for the drawings, scales are either wanting or too short and uncertain to be depended on, and the lithography so poor that measurements cannot always be trusted as accurate.
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² The measurements here are taken from the plan in Rice's 'Inscriptions at Sravana Belgola,' at Tr. p. 149, on the assumption that the scale is 1 : 147·5—possibly intended for 12 ft. to 1 in. The plan shows the walls round the shrine as about 12½ ft. thick.
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¹ Rice's 'Inscriptions at Sravana Belgola,' pp. 35 and 50.
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302. Jaina Bastis at Sravana Belgola. (From a Photograph.)
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swâmi bastî. The sikhara over the cell is always surmounted by a small dome, as is universally the case with every vimâna in Dravidian architecture, instead of with the amalaka ornament of the northern sikharas.
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When we descend the Ghâts into Kanara, or the Tuluva country, we come on a totally different state of matters. Jainism is the religion of the country, and nearly all the temples belong to this sect, but there architecture is neither the Dravidian style of the south, nor that of northern India, and indeed is not known to exist anywhere else in India Proper, but something very like it, possessing similar peculiarities, recurs in Nepâl.
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The annexed two views (Woodcuts Nos. 303 and 304) of one of the largest of these temples, found at Mûdabidri, in Kanara, about 20 miles north-east from Mangalor, will give a fair idea of the general aspect of these temples externally. There are some sixteen bastîs at this place, of which the largest and most notable is the Hosa-bastî, built in A.D. 1430. They are much plainer than Hindû temples usually are. The pillars look like logs of wood with the angles partially chamfered off, so as to make them octagons, and the sloping roofs of the verandahs are so evidently wooden that the style itself cannot be far
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303. Jaina Temple at Mûdabidri. (From a Photograph.)
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removed from a wooden original. In many places, indeed, below the Ghâts the temples are still wholly constructed in wood without any admixture of stone, and almost all the features of the Mûdabidri temples may be found in wood at the present day. The blinds between the pillars, which are there executed in stone, are found in wood in every city in India, and with very little variation are used by Europeans in Calcutta to a greater extent, perhaps, than they were ever used by the natives.
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The feature, however, which presents the greatest resemblance to the northern styles, is the reverse slope of the eaves above the verandah. The same style is found in the old temples at Kârkala and elsewhere in Kanara, but in no other district south of Nepâl; but when we look for its origin, we at once recognise it in the huts and houses of the district, from the thatched roofs of which it has evidently been copied.
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There are sixteen of these Bastîs at Mûdabidri, though the Jain inhabitants of the village are now but few. The interiors of these temples are in marked contrast with the plainness of the exteriors. Nothing can exceed the richness
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304. Jaina Temple at Mûdabidri. (From a Photograph.)
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or the variety with which they are carved. No two pillars seem alike, and many are ornamented to an extent that may seem almost fantastic. This again seems an indication of their recent descent from a wooden original. Long habit of using stone would have sobered their forms: they are now of great thickness—it may even be said massiveness—and this is just such an excess of strength as a people accustomed to wooden architecture would employ when first called upon to replace in stone supports which in wood would have appeared necessary to carry a heavy stone roof (Woodcut No. 305).
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305. Pillar in a Temple at Mûdabidri. (From a Photograph.)
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Their plans, as far as can be made out from photographs, are those usual in Jaina temples—spacious, well-lighted porches or mandapas—of which there are three in the larger temples and two in the smaller—leading to a cell in which the images of one or more of the Tîrthankaras is placed, naked of course, as the southern Jains belong to the Digambara sect.¹
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¹ The three mandapas in the larger Bastîs are known as the Tîrthankara, Gaddige, and Chitra mandapas; and in the smaller ones, as the Tîrthankara and Namaskara mandapas. — Dr Hultzsch’s ‘Epigraphical Report for 1900-1901.’
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Their age has been determined from inscriptions, and they date from about the beginning of the 12th century downwards—the finest belonging to the 15th century.
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306. Pavilion at Guruvâyankeri. (From a Photograph.)
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Besides the greater temples, there are several varieties of smaller ones which seem peculiar to the style—such, for instance, as the five-pillared shrine at Guruvâyankeri (Woodcut No. 306) belonging to a Jaina temple, in front of which it stands. Four-pillared pavilions are not uncommon in front of Hindû temples in the south. There is a very famous one, for instance, on the opposite shore of India at Mâmallapuram, but not one, that I know of, with five pillars, or with access to the upper chambers. There are three of these upper chambers in this instance—the two lower now closed, but apparently originally open, but to what use they were devoted, or what purpose they were intended to subserve, is by no means clear. At the base of the temple are a number of stones bearing images of serpents, probably votive presentations; there are seven or eight of them, and the serpents themselves are some with one, others three, five, or seven heads.
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A third feature, even more characteristic of the style, is found in the tombs of the priests, a large number of which are found in the neighbourhood of Mûdabidri. Three of these are illustrated in the annexed woodcut (No. 307). They vary much in size and magnificence, some being from three to five or seven storeys in height; but they are not, like the storeys of Dravidian temples, ornamented with simulated cells and finishing with domical roofs. The division of each storey is a sloping roof like those of the
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307. Tombs of Priests, Mûdabidri. (From a Photograph.)
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pagodas at Kâthmândû, and in China or Tibet. In India they are quite anomalous. In the first place, no tombs of priests are known to exist anywhere else, and their forms, too, are quite unlike any other building now known to be standing in any other part of India.
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Though not the grandest, certainly the most elegant and graceful objects to be found in Kanara belonging to the Jaina style of architecture are the stambhas, which are found attached to many of their temples. These are not, however, peculiar to the place or style. They are used sometimes by the Hindûs, but then frequently as dîpdâns, or lamp-bearing pillars, and in that case have some arrangement for exhibiting light from their summits or round their shafts. With the Jains this does not appear ever to have been the case. Their pillars are the lineal descendants of those of the Buddhists, which bore either emblems or statues—generally the former—or figures of animals; with the Jains and Vaishnavas they as generally bore figures.¹ In the south, however, the Jains have two styles of pillars—the Brahmadeva Stambhas, bearing figures of the god Brahma, and the Mâna-stambhas which are taller and bear a small pavilion on the capital.² The example here given of one of the latter class at Guruvâyankeri is a fair average specimen of its class (Woodcut No. 308). The sub-base is square and spreading; the base itself square, changing into an octagon, and thence into a polygonal figure approaching a circle; and above a wide-spreading capital of most elaborate design. To many this may at first sight appear top-heavy, but it is not so in reality. If you erect a pillar at all, it ought to have something to carry. Those we erect are copied from pillars meant to support architraves, and are absurd solecisms when merely supporting statues; we have, however, got accustomed to them, and our eye is offended if anything better proportioned to the work to be done is proposed; but, looking at the breadth of the base and the strength of the shaft, anything less than here exhibited would be found disproportionately small.
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¹ *Ante*, pp. vol. i. 347, 348, and vol. ii. p. 21.
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² ‘Epigraphia Indica,’ vol. viii. p. 123.
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308. Stambha at Guruvâyankeri. (From a Photograph.)
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On the lower or square part of these stambhas, as well as on the pillars inside the temples at Mûdabidri (Woodcut No. 305) and elsewhere in Kanara, we find that curious interlaced basket-pattern, which is so familiar to us from Irish manuscripts or the ornaments on Irish crosses. As pointed out elsewhere,¹ 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. But stranger things have happened than even this in the history of architecture, and few things can be more interesting when the means exist of tracing any connection that may be detected between them.
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¹ Fergusson, ‘History of Ancient and Medieval Architecture,’ vol. i. p. 479.
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If any one wished to select one feature of Indian architecture which would illustrate its rise and progress, as well as its perfection and weakness, there are probably no objects more suited for this purpose than these stambhas, or free-standing pillars. They are found of all ages, from the simple and monolithic lâts which Asoka set up to bear inscriptions or emblems, some 250 years B.C. down to the seventeenth or perhaps even eighteenth century of our era. During these 2000 years they were erected by the Buddhists and by the Jains, as well as by the other sects in all parts of India; and notwithstanding their inherent frailty, some fifty—it may be a hundred—are known to be still standing. After the first and most simple, erected by Asoka, it may be safely asserted that no two are alike though all bear strongly the impress of the age in which they were erected, and all are thoroughly original and Indian in design.²
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² With the Asoka lâts, and the stambhas at Kârlê and Kanheri, may be compared the Saiva and Jaina pillars at Elûrâ, shown in Woodcuts Nos. 202 and 275.
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It may be owing to the styloclastic propensities of the Moslims that these pillars are not found so frequently where they have held sway, as in the remoter parts of India; but, whether from this cause or not, they seem to be more frequent in Kanara and among the southern Jains than in any other part of India. In the north we depend mainly on the rock-cut examples for their forms, but they are so usual there that it seems hardly doubtful they were relatively as frequent in connection with structural examples, though these have generally disappeared.
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It has been suggested that there may be some connection between these stambhas and the obelisks of the Egyptians. The time that elapsed, however, between the erection of the monoliths in the valley of the Nile and those in India seems to render this very doubtful, though they were certainly erected for similar purposes and occupied the same position relatively to the temples. When, however, we look at the vast difference between their designs, it is evident, even assuming a connection, that vast ages must have elapsed before the plain straight-lined forms of the obelisks could have been changed into the complicated and airy forms of the Jaina stambhas. The two are the Alpha and Omega of architectural design—the older, simple and severe, beyond any other examples of purely ornamental objects; the latter, more varied and more highly ornamented than almost any others of their class that can be named.
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We are hardly yet in a position to push these speculations to their legitimate issue, and must wait for further information before any satisfactory conclusion can be derived from them; but meanwhile it may be pointed out how curiously characteristic of Indian art it is that this little remote province of Tuluva, or Kanara, should have a style of its own, differing essentially from that found in any other part of the Indian continent, but still having resemblances that suggest affinities with outlying and distant countries, with which one can hardly suspect any connection but for the indications suggested by their architecture.
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Such indications have led to the conjecture that some early connection existed between Nepâl and Tibet and Kanara.¹ Yet the affinities in architectural style are explained by their natural and independent derivation in both regions from the humbler forms of the native dwellings that long experience had discovered as best suited to the special natural conditions which prevail in both the areas. That this has not been hitherto made clear is largely due to the circumstance that photographers have directed their attention to important structures only, and have entirely overlooked the humbler native huts and houses that so readily explain the origin of the styles. It is not very difficult to conjecture how early and frequent intercourse may have existed between the Persian Gulf and the western shores of India, and how the relations between these two countries may have been so intimate as to account for the amount of what we now call Armenian forms that we find in the Jaina architecture of southern India, especially in that below the Ghâts. It will require, however, that the Indian branch of the subject should be much more fully and more scientifically investigated than has hitherto been the case before it is worth while to do more than indicate how rich a field lies open to reward the industry of any future explorer.
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¹ *Ante*, vol. i. p. 286.