From
the Publisher
The jain temples at Dilwara in Mount Abu evoke a sense of
awe for their sculptural artistry. Unnamed artists who had,
for years, created exquisite pieces who had, for years,
created exquisite pieces in ivory, now worked with marble,
sculpting ceilings and domes, columns and walls, creating
works of unparalleled beauty. They carried forward, and
deepened, a rich tradition of temple building in India, with
their plethora of images from Indian myths and legends.
Numerous gods and goddesses, yaksas and yaksis, dancers and
musicians, apsaras and nagins, as well as flowers and trees -
mythic and real- adore every nook and corner of these temples.
The most outstanding feature of these temples are the
thousand- pettalled lotuses that decorate the domes in the
rangamandapas, signifying a very highly evolved technical and
artistic achievement.
Some 200 kms away and 500 years later, in
Ranakpur, the
Adisvara temple is an achievement of a different kind. It is
renowned for its architectural splendour; a thousand columns
that define its wondrous spaces are all unique, as no two are
alike.
Using these temples as nodal points for a photographic and
a reflective study, Professor Sehdev Kumar explores the
artistic nuances of these temples in the context of the rich
tradition of temple architecture and iconography in India.
Author Description
Sehdev Kumar is Professor of Environmental Studies at the
University of Waterloo, Canada. A long-time student of Indian
artistic and spiritual traditions, he is also the author of
The Vision of Kabir and The Lotus in the Stone. He has also
made several films including Outside In, Symmetry-Symmetry,
Love Suzanne, Ivory Tower.
Photographic exhibitions of these temples have been held in
many countries.
Sehdev Kumar's next forthcoming book is Visions from
Wilderness about the great literary naturalist Loren Eiseley.
Preface
The length and breadth of India is dotted with great
architectural monuments: the temples at Belur and Halebid, the
Sun Temple at Konark, the Kailash Temple at Ellora, the
Buddhist stupa at Sanchi are all expressions of an abiding
artistic exuberance that is part of the cultural heritage of
India.
As the birthplace of several major religious traditions,
India is a natural sacred ground for a stone or a rock to be
transformed into a work of art. For centuries, the sumptuous
Indian mythology- of the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Jains
-enriched the imagination of the artist in a thousand
different ways, inspiring him to create works that are at once
earthy and heavenly, like a lotus flower. In the splendour of
architectural spaces, any column, or a ceiling, or a wall
served for the artist as a canvas, to be painted upon, to be
chiseled, and to be sculpted, for celebration, or worship, or
adoration. Gods and goddesses, yaksas and yaksis, dancers and
musicians, apsaras and nagins, trees and flowers, all revealed
a drama that was endlessly human and mythic. An Indian temple
thus is a veritable art gallery, a theatre and a museum.
The Jains have been the great temple builders in India
particularly in the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Their
temples are marked by the same aplomb that is evident in other
Indian temples. Many consider the Jains or their rituals, at
times, to be somewhat otherworldly; however, as
temple-builders they evince all the earthiness of a
stone-cutter, or a jeweler. There is thus a great sense of
detail and precision in their craft. The Jains are rooted in
an arthodox tradition but they are far from unwilling to try
new tools and new materials.
The history of construction of jain temples in Rajasthan
and elsewhere is well-documented by a number of distinguished
scholars. The present work explores, somewhat
impressionistically, the iconographic and architectural
details of two sets of Jain temples in Rajasthan, one at
Dilwara in Mount Abu and the other at Ranakpur, within the
larger tradition of Indian arts and temple architecture. These
two sets of temples are separated from each other by some five
hundred years and two hundred kilometers. Yet there is an
unbroken continuity of icons and images in these temples that
is part of a still larger continuous tradition of temple
architecture in India. Over a span of five hundred years,
there is an artistic growth and a movement, but all within an
abiding cultural stillness that can be perhaps best understood
with a certain mythopoeic reference that goes beyond the mere
facts of history.
This work has been in the making since 1980; the
photographs and the reflections on the iconography and
architecture- with numerous stories that are enfolded in them-
needed much defining and refining at many stages. In this
process I am beholden to many in several places: at the Indian
Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla, during my Fellowship in
1986-87, and at the Universities of Waterloo and Toronto in
Canada for discussions with Dr. Michael Aris, Dr. S.C. Malik,
Dr. Sukrita Kumar, Professor M.M. Agrawal, Professor Rekha
Jhanji, Professor Joseph O' Connell and Professor Frank
Thompson. My gratitude is also to Shastri Indo-Cnadian
Institute, Ontario Arts Council, Social Science and Humanities
Research Council of Canada and Indira Gandhi National Center
for the Arts for supporting this work in numerous ways.
This work could not have been completed in the present form
without the support and guidance of Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan at
all stages. I express my profound gratitude to Kapilaji for
seeing it through.
I am also much thankful to Dr.
L.M. Gujral, Consultant, IGNCA, and to Mr. Shakti Malik of Abhinav Publications for
their support and dedication for this work.
Above all I am beholden for a certain reflection on these
temples to the immensely gifted artists and the artisans who
created works of such grandeur many centuries ago.
