History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c24.s6.2

v2.c24.s6.2

Unfortunately, no photographer has yet visited the hill, nor any one who was able to discriminate between what was new and what old. Such accounts, however, as we have are by no means encouraging, and do not lead us to expect any very remarkable architectural remains. The temples on the hill are numerous, but they seem all modern, or at least to have been so completely repaired in modern times that their more ancient features cannot now be discerned. Something may also be due to the fact that Bengal has never been essentially a Jaina country. The Pâla dynasty of Bengal seem to have remained Buddhist nearly to the Muhammadan conquest (A.D. 1203), when they seem suddenly to have dropped that religion and plunged headlong into the Vaishnava and Saiva superstitions. Whether from this, or from some other cause we cannot now explain, Jainism does not seem to have taken root in Bengal. At the time that it, with Buddhism, took its rise in the 5th century B.C. Bihâr was the intellectual and the political centre of India, and Buddhism long held its sway in the country of its birth. Before, however, Jainism became politically important, the centre of power had gravitated towards the West, and Jainism does not seem to have attained any great importance in the country where it first appeared. Were it not for this, there seems little doubt but that Pârasnâth would have been more important in their eyes than Pâlitânâ or Girnâr; but it is not so, and it consequently occupies only a very slight corner in an architectural history of India.