Month: April 2023

Vidisha Vidisha, situated on the River Betwa and about 100 km south of Deogarh, was one of the first places at which images of Jinas were worshipped. The earliest of them were cut in the walls of the two Jaina caves of Udaygiri, 5 km to the north-east of Vidisha. The first structural temples no...

The Jaina Art Of Gwalior And Deogarh Klaus Bruhn Three seasons in a hospitable Indian village and the support of a co-operative Jaina community are remembered to this day, and I am grateful to KURT TITZE for an oppor tunity to return to a subject which I studied almost forty years ago as a young...

 

Ramtek  Digambara Jaina nuns returning from their morning walk to the Ramtek Shantinatha Temple, their temporary abode (see pages 14, 15). The temple, situated at the western foot of a mountain range sacred to the Hindu god Rama, was built in the eleventh/twelfth century. (The fort and the Rama temples on top of the hill...

A King Tomorrow An Ascetic Scenes from a Digambara diksha (initiation) at a New Delhi suburb in February 1992. On the first day, the candidate to monkhood, a successful 60-year-old founder-owner of a construction enterprise, was led in a procession through the streets of his fashionable neighbourhood. For this occasion he was dressed like a...

Karanja  Karanja: Balatkara Gana Mandir. A sample of the superb wood-carvings to be marvelled at in this seldom mentioned temple. Its other treasures -- icons in both stone and metal - are of an equally high standard. Karanja, a town of around $1,000 inhabitants of which c.4500 are Jainas, is another place in Maharashtra State...

Muktagir The origin of Muktagiri as a centre of pilgrimage goes back to a memorable occurrence in which the leading part is played by a saintly monk. This is something characteristic of many places featured in this book and confirms the traditional conviction held by Jainas that their saints of old lived up to the...

Ellora "Visitors to Ellora see the Jaina temples only after they have looked at Buddhist and Brahmanical ones, that is, when exhausted after their mile-long walk, and with their visual memories loaded with powerful images. They can then be hardly expected to have any interest left for the Jaina sculptures, and their indifference not seldom...

Mangi Tungi Sacred Mangi Tungi - a sight to be seen! - is located at the end of a side-track in a thinly populated area of scenic grandeur. Rama and Sita on their flight from Ayodhya are said to have sojourned for a while at the foot of the Mangi, the western pinnacle of the...