Jaina - Temple Architecture in India (The Developmentof a Distinct Language in Space and Ritual)

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On innumerable travels throughout the Indian subcontinent over the past eighteen years, I saw large numbers of Jaina temples. Due to my particular interest in the ritual use, as well as the philosophical and religious meanings attached to architecture, I was frequently impressed by the enormous complexity and striking distinctiveness of the temples. It was with great surprise and disappointment that I usually found nothing or surprisingly little written about these often highly unusual and intricate Jaina structures, which in grandeur and splendour surpassed so many of the other buildings discussed at great length in travel guides and art-historical studies. The reason for their absence from the available literature seemed not to be due to a lack of artistic ability on the side of the builders and sculptors of Jaina temples, but due to a lack of awareness and interest in Jainism and its material culture on the side of the writers. This shortcoming provided the impulse to collect and assemble the data to present a first comprehensive overview of Jaina sacred architecture in India, and to emphasise its typical and unifying aspects in the various regions of the subcontinent. It is as part of my Habilitation, submitted to the Rheinisch-Westfalische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) in Aachen in October 2006, which was examined in January 2008, that this goal has been addressed and put into practice.

In the period between 1998 and 2006, I returned to many sites I had seen on previous research visits, and during more than eighteen months of fieldwork, I complemented these with a large amount of new material from Jaina sites found in every corner of the subcontinent. In total, several thousand Jaina temples at more than five hundred sites throughout India and Nepal were visited and surveyed to provide the data for the present study. I In the true fashion of Jaina anekantavada, the philosophy of many view points or manifold aspects, the subject continued to expand along entirely unforeseen avenues.' Soon it became more of a problem to decide what was to be left out rather than what would be included in this examination of Jaina temple architecture, as the wealth of Jaina artistic material proved to be truly remarkable and limitless. Whereas the aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview and discussion of the unifying and common aspects of Jaina temple architecture, further regional and thematic enquiries have been planned for the future, and it is hoped that this study will stimulate a debate and draw the attention of many other historians of art and architecture to this enormously rich and rewarding area.

My research on Jaina temple architecture has generously been funded by a series of academic institutions and grant bodies. Special thanks go to the Master and Fellows of University College Oxford, who financed the beginnings of this large project, welcomed me as a member of their academic community and provided me with much encouragement and stimulating debates. Further funding was received from the Wingate Foundation and the Society for South Asian Studies, which enabled me to spend long and fruitful periods on fieldwork in India. I am particularly indebted to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), who over the past six years has financed this research project through their Emmy Noether-Programm, providing a strong institutional backing and access to a network of research-active academics in German universities. The publication of this substantial study has been made possible through a generous publication grant from the Stiftung Ernst Waldschmidt in Berlin.

I am very grateful to Professor Dr. Jan Pieper from the Rheinisch-Westfalische-Technische Hochschule (RWTH) for supporting my Habilitation in Aachen and for many stimulating conversations on South Asian architecture. Thanks also go to Dr. George Michell in London and Prof. Attilio PetruccioLi in Bari who acted as external referees. I have benefited greatly from discussions with other colleagues too. In Great Britain, these were in particular Prof. Richard Gombrich, Prof. Alexis Sanderson, Dr. Marcus Banks and Dr. Sarah Shaw in Oxford, Dr. Peter Flugel in London, Dr. Paul Dundas in Edinburgh, Dr. Will Johnson in Cardiff, Dr. Richard Fynes in Leicester, Prof. Suzy Butters, Dr. Tom Rasmussen and Dr. John Zavos in Manchester. In Germany, I am especially grateful to Prof. Dr. Subrata K. Mitra from the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg for generous support and a genuine interest in learning from and contributing to other disciplines. In addition, I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Axel Michaels and other members of the Collaborative Research Centre Dynamics of Ritual (SFB 619) at the University of Heidelberg, Prof. Dr. Willem B. Bollee in Bamberg and Prof. Dr. Jayandra Soni in Marburg. In Berlin, special thanks go to Prof. Dr. Harry Falk, Prof. Dr. Adalbert 1. Gail, Prof. Dr. Klaus Bruhn, Dr. Heino Kottkamp, Dr. Falk Reitz and Gerd Mevissen, and in Munich to Prof. Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm, Prof. Dr. Adelheid Mette and Prof. Dr. Robert Zydenbos. In the United States of America, I am equally grateful to Prof. Padmanabh S. Jaini at Berkeley, Prof. Susan L. Huntington in Ohio, Prof. Phyllis Granoff at Yale, Prof. John Cort in Granville and Dr. Bob del Bonta in San Francisco. In Canada, I am thankful to Dr. Sushil Jain from Windsor and to Prof. Joseph O'Connell in Toronto. Very useful advice has also been provided by Dr. Olle Qvarnstrom from Lund. In India, I had the privilege of discussing my work with Prof. M. A. Dhaky in Gurgaon, Prof. S. Settar in Bangalore, the late Prof. K. S. Shivanna in Mysore, Dr. Pius F. Pinto in Mangalore, Prof. Prasanna Kumar Nayak from Bhubanesvar and with many J aina laypeople, ascetics and bhattarakas. I would like to express special gratitude to H. H. Lakshrni Sena Mahaswarnigal, the bhattaraka of the Jina Kanchi Mutt at Melsittamur. Without the help and support of the Jaina community, who provided access and transport to many remote sites, and shared information on temple histories and rituals, this research project could not have been undertaken. I am exceedingly grateful to the members of the Chandaria family in the UK, in Canada and in Kenya, for providing me with access to local Jaina temples and photographic material of Jaina centres in the diaspora. Two further illustrations reproduced in this study, have kindly been provided by the American Institute of Indian Studies (AlIS) in Gurgaon. My student helpers, Julia Lauer, Anna Shiaan and Navina Sarma in Heidelberg, and Irene Martin-Alvarez in Manchester, have been wonderful assistants in locating and obtaining obscure publications and checking dubious spellings and temple names. In London, I would like to thank Roger Smedley for proofreading the entire manuscript. I am also thankful to the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics Heidelberg, and especially to Dr. Alban Kellerbauer, for the use of their colour laser printer. Special thanks go to my aunt Bettina Hegewald, for designing the print layout of this book. I would like to express particular gratitude to my father, Prof. Dr. Ulf Hegewald, for help with reworking my photographs and drawings, for preparing the basic layout of this publication, and for many valuable discussions of the architectural material. I dedicate this book to him.

Diacritical marks have been used for the transliteration of religious terms and philosophical concepts, for the names of temples and other architectural structures, and where available for proper names. All objects of Jaina devotion, including sacred hills and mountains, have also been spelled with diacritics. In order to ease the reading and the recognition of sites, however, diacritical marks have been omitted from place names and those of rivers.' Titles, such as 'Jina' or "Tirthankara,' have been provided with diacritical marks but as they are common and almost treated as 'English' words today, they have not been italicised. Other words of Indian origin, which have found their way into English, such as 'stupa' or 'bangala' roof, and the names of Indian languages, such as 'Sanskrit' or 'Ardhamaghadi,' have neither been itaLicised nor been provided with diacritics. Place names have been given in what has been perceived as their most common way of spelling in English. For lesser known places, the usage printed on official maps has, where available, been used. As this study covers the entire Indian subcontinent, it refers to temples and place names in a variety of Indian languages and dialects. Whereas for general Jaina religious and philosophical terms, the Sanskrit spelling has usually been used, in the names of local temples and sites, their version in the local language has been transcribed.

In bibliographical references in the main text and in the footnotes, the initials of authors have been omitted. With regards to the common surname 'Jain: however, an exception had to be made. The number of authors writing on Jaina subjects who bear this name is so large, that a clear identification of individual articles and books without providing the initials of authors could otherwise not always have been guaranteed Plate in brackets refers to the photographic illustrations. ‘Fig’ in brackets refers to two hundred sketch drawings of Jaina temples and pilgrimage centers, and to five maps marking the rough location of most Jaina sites mentioned in the associated chapters.

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