DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0274
Chap. III.
AMWAH.
251
northern Indians, though, why this particular sect should have
adopted it, and why they, and they only, should have persevered in
using it through so long a period, are questions we are not yet in
a position to answer. It was an essential feature in the architecture
of the Moslems before they came into India, and they consequently
eagerly seized on the domes of the Jains when they first arrived
there, and afterwards from them worked out that domical style
which is one of the most marked characteristics of their art in India.
141. I'oreh of Jaiiiii Temple at Amwah, near Ajunta. (From a Photograph by Major Gill.)
One of the most interesting Jaina monuments of the age is the
tower of Sri Allat,1 which still adorns the brow of Chittore (Woodcut
No. 142, next page), and is one probably of a great number of similar
monuments that may at one time have existed. From their form, how-
ever, they are frail, and trees and human violence so easily overthrow
them, that we ought not to wonder that so few remain. This one is
a singularly elegant specimen of its class, about 80 ft. in height, and
adorned with sculpture and mouldings from the base to the summit.2
An inscription once existed at its base, which gave its date as A.D.
896, and though the slab was detached this is so nearly the date we
would arrive at from the style that there seems little doubt that it
1 Sri Allat, to whom the erection of this
tower is ascribed, is the 12th king, men-
tioned in Tod's Aitpore inscriptions
('Rajastan,' vol. i. p. 802).
- ' Picturos<]ue Illustrations of Ancient
Architecture in Hindostan,' hy the
Author, pL 8, p. 38.
AMWAH.
251
northern Indians, though, why this particular sect should have
adopted it, and why they, and they only, should have persevered in
using it through so long a period, are questions we are not yet in
a position to answer. It was an essential feature in the architecture
of the Moslems before they came into India, and they consequently
eagerly seized on the domes of the Jains when they first arrived
there, and afterwards from them worked out that domical style
which is one of the most marked characteristics of their art in India.
141. I'oreh of Jaiiiii Temple at Amwah, near Ajunta. (From a Photograph by Major Gill.)
One of the most interesting Jaina monuments of the age is the
tower of Sri Allat,1 which still adorns the brow of Chittore (Woodcut
No. 142, next page), and is one probably of a great number of similar
monuments that may at one time have existed. From their form, how-
ever, they are frail, and trees and human violence so easily overthrow
them, that we ought not to wonder that so few remain. This one is
a singularly elegant specimen of its class, about 80 ft. in height, and
adorned with sculpture and mouldings from the base to the summit.2
An inscription once existed at its base, which gave its date as A.D.
896, and though the slab was detached this is so nearly the date we
would arrive at from the style that there seems little doubt that it
1 Sri Allat, to whom the erection of this
tower is ascribed, is the 12th king, men-
tioned in Tod's Aitpore inscriptions
('Rajastan,' vol. i. p. 802).
- ' Picturos<]ue Illustrations of Ancient
Architecture in Hindostan,' hy the
Author, pL 8, p. 38.