From Chapter 20
North-Central and Northwestern India: The Art of the Rajput Clans

Among the most notable monuments of the Solanki period are the Jain temples on Mount Abu in Rajasthan (Fig. 20.50). Although Abu, named after the sacred mountain in the Sirohi district, had been famous for centuries, it came into special prominence under the Paramara suzerains of the Solankis. Inscriptional and archaeological evidence testifies that it was holy both to Saivites and Jains from an early period, but since Mahavira himself is supposed to have visited the site, it has been especially sacred to the Jains as a tirtha, or place of pilgrimage. Its sacred character is further suggested by the fact that the so-called Agni-kula (fire-pit clan) Rajputs claim to have originated there.

As a temple city, it ranks among the finest ones of the Jains. Built over a period of time, it was added to, refurbished, and elaborated upon, reflecting the sustained patronage of wealthy Jains whose religion dictated that they acquire their means through peaceable occupations, such as banking and trading, rather than through the spoils of war. The important ports of western India, at which cloth (particularly Gujarati cotton), ivory, and other items were traded with the Arab and European worlds, enabled this region to become perhaps the wealthiest in all of India during this period. As a consequence, almost no expense was spared in the production of images and shrines for the religion. The white marble temples, generally stark and plain on the exterior but intricately carved inside, demonstrate that the Indic artists and their patrons had not lost their zeal for sculpture in spite of the fact that their energies were now diverted from primarily rock-cut monuments to structural temples.

Apparently, Jains played an important role in Solanki society, even from the time of the founder of the dynasty, Mularaja. Thus, it is not surprising that during the reign of Bhima I his minister, Vimala, built a magnificent temple at Dilwara (Delvada, City of Temples) on Abu, and dedicated it to Adinatha (Rsabhanatha), the first Jain tirthankara (Fig. 20.51a). (A second temple at Mount Abu is also dedicated to Adinatha [Fig. 20.51c].) Supposedly, Vimala built the temple out of his desire to atone for the sins of killing (himsa), which he had committed in carrying out the duties of statecraft. Jain legend records that Vimala, who had no male heirs, propitiated the goddess Ambika, requesting two things: a male heir and help in erecting the temple at Abu to atone for his sin. Ambika replied that while his merit was great, it was not so great that he could have both wishes and, when forced to choose one, Vimala decided to erect the temple. Vimala's structure was completed in 1088 of the Vikrama era, or 1032 and was built almost entirely out of black marble apparently available locally on the mountain top. According to Jain tradition, the temple cost Vimala a total of 185,300,000 rupees, including the price of purchasing the land from the brahmans.

Very little of Vimala's original temple remains today, although a few black marble sculptures and fragments testify to its former existence.

As it stands, the temple is a product of many periods and is made almost entirely of white marble, not black. Some work was apparently done not long after the original construction, with most of its essential components built by the late twelfth century. However, building activity continued at least into the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar in the late sixteenth century, for one of his religious teachers is represented by a portrait at the temple. On the whole, however, the temple may be considered representative of the Solanki style. The plain exteriors of Vimala's temple and the other Dilwara monuments belie the extravagant interiors and contrast strongly with so many other temples of this period whose exteriors were lavishly decorated with figures and other sculptural ornamentation. It is possible that when the temple was rebuilt after the partial destruction that probably occurred when Alaud-Din Khilji invaded Jalor fort near Abu in 1311, the superstructures were not reconstructed to their full original height, nor were other aspects of the exterior decoration redone so extravagantly. It may also be suggested that these features of the exterior might never have been as grand as those of other contemporary styles. The constant threat of invasion by the Muslims during this transitional phase of South Asian history, especially in this western region, which suffered first when invaders arrived, may have led to a style in which the exterior of a religious structure did not advertise the wealth of the temple, while the interiors could be made as lavishly as desired and thus be preserved from the Muslim iconoclastic energies.

Vimala's temple is essentially rectangular in plan and is oriented on an east-west axis with the main temple facing east. The temple is bounded by a rectangular cloister having a row of double pillars on the east, north, and south sides, a single row on the west, and fifty-two cells (deva-kuIika) containing representations of seated Jain tirthankaras. This arrangement in which the main temple is surrounded by a cloister, has been seen in other temple styles, but the emphasis on the pillars, here almost a forest of pillars, creates a totally different effect and characterizes the style. Outside the cloister walls, a number of other halls and structures were added in later periods.

The first of three mandapas, the sabha mandapa, on the east, is the largest, but its form and the carvings, especially of its magnificent domed ceiling, may belong to the mid-twelfth century, when repairs were carried out at the temple (Fig. 30.52). Almost every section of the ceiling and wall surfaces as well as the pillars is carved into intricate patterns. The sabha mandapa and the next mandapa, the nava-choki (nine-compartment hall; Fig. 20.53), are distinguished from the main body of the temple by their open form, as they are unwalled. These two pillared halls precede a third mandapa that does not have pillars, but that is unified with the shrine area. This unit comprises the central core, which is virtually ubiquitous in Hindu temple architecture after the Gupta period, though sometimes its simplicity seems obscured because of the addition of pillared halls and other architectural units. The original image of the shrine has been replaced by a later sculpture. However, the appearance of this figure may be inferred from the representations of tirthakaras in the small shrines in the cloister of the temple. These figures, such as the one illustrated (Fig. 20.5.4), epitomize the fully developed Jain sculpture style of western India in which the forms of the body are abstracted to almost pure geometric equivalents. The torso, for example, takes the shape of a triangle; the arms and legs are tapered cylinders; and the head is a slightly squared sphere. The surfaces of the body are smooth, serving as a physical symbol of the spiritual perfection of the tirthankara. The style of subsidiary figures adorning the temple reflects that of the major icons, although unlike the shrine images, others making up the elaborate decorative scheme of the temple are generally very animated in their poses. A representation of a female musician on a pillar capital in the sabha mandapa twists in space so that her body seems to revolve around a spiral axis from her grounded foot to her turned head (Fig. 20.55). Her limbs are rodlike cylinders, and the parts of her body are juxtaposed in an angular, geometric fashion.

The fruition of the Solanki style, manifested in the thirteenth century, may also be seen at Mount Abu in another Jain monument. The temple of Tejpala, dedicated to Neminatha, the twenty-second Jain tirthankara, is clearly modeled after Vimala's temple, perhaps with the aim of outdoing its predecessor. Tejpala, and his brother Vastupala, have often been called the "Medicis of India" because of their extensive patronage of art and architecture in favor of the Jains. These two wealthy laymen are credited in epigraphic and literary sources with the building of numerous Jain monuments, a few of which survive, including a triple-shrined temple of Vastupala at Girnar, and Tejpala's temple at Mount Abu. No less than thirty inscriptions at the Abu temple provide important historical information including the dates of consecration of various portions of the temple between 1230 and 1240 and after. Tejpala built the temple for the spiritual welfare of his wife, Anupamadevi and their son, Lunasimha, after whom the temple is often called Luna Vasahi. Jain tradition holds that the cost of this monument was 125,300,000 rupees, slightly less than that of Vimala's temple. The later structure is built to approximately the same scale as Vimala's temple and, like the post-Vimala phase of that temple, is also made of finely wrought white marble. Permission to build the temple had been granted by the Solanki king Bhima II as well as the Paramara ruler of Abu, Somasimha. Like Vimala's temple, this structure is more fabulous inside than out—its halls, pillars, and shrines being lavishly carved of the beautiful white stone.

In plan, Tejpala's temple is a virtual duplicate of the essential features of Vimala's temple (Fig. 20.51b), although it is oriented to the west, not the east. Certain portions of the temple were repaired in 1321 after the Muslim destructions of 1311 to both this and Vimala's temple, but the interior speaks of the finest of Solanki monuments. A view of the interior shows the intricacy of carving for which the Mount Abu temples are famous, which has led to the often repeated suggestion that the artisans were paid according to how much stone they removed so that they were encouraged to deeply undercut their forms and thus create the characteristic lacelike appearance (Fig. 20.56). Every ceiling is carved in a unique pattern, including foliate and geometric motifs, figurative sculpture, and invariably a central pendent made of a single piece of stone carved in an intricate design. As in the case of Vimala's temple, the ceiling of the sabha mandapa is a vast domed creation (Fig. 20.57). The major symbolic motif in each case is a set of sixteen female figures, the maha-vidyadevis. In Jain literature, there are sixteen maha-vidyadevis who personify various kinds of knowledge, usually associated with magical practices and are invoked at certain stages of religious practice. These figures reveal the modifications in style that have taken place over the centuries of Solanki art. The figures are more slender and attenuated, and have tubular limbs, without joints or articulation of flesh or skin and no softness of form, contrasting with earlier styles.

This style is also visible in the portrait sculptures of Tejpala and his wife Anupamadevi at the temple (Fig. 20.58). Hardly based on the actual physical appearance of the individuals, the stylized facial features, with the large wide open, almond shaped eyes, painted to become a focus of attention, and the typically swaying poses resemble the numerous other portrayals in sculpture at the temple. Conceived as types rather than as individuals, the sculpted figures in various elements of the temple, such as a ceiling panel from one of the corridors (Fig. 20.59), became part of the patternized forms that pervade the temple, which are expressions of the highest religious goal in Indic thought, that is, the absorption of the individual into the entire pattern of the cosmos. In spite of the fact that the extraordinary opulence of such a monument almost seems to contradict the world-negating asceticism of the Jain religion, perhaps it portrays the multiplicity within the Unity that underlies Jain belief.