A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c8.80

c8.80

A beautiful variation of the Āryāvarta or Indo-Aryan style, found in Rājputāna and Gūjarāt, is characterized by a free use of columns carved with all imaginable richness, strut brackets, and exquisite marble ceilings with cusped pendants, at least equal to the best Tudor work of the kind. By an unfortunate error Fergusson described this Western or Gūjarātī style as the 'Jain style'. In reality it has no concern with any special kind of religion, and is Jain merely because Jains were numerous and wealthy in Western India long ago as they are still. When power passed into Muslim hands the so-called Jain style, that is to say the local style, was applied with the necessary modifications to the needs of Muhammadan worship (*post*, Chap. XII).