2. Under the shadow of Islam.The Mohammedans found in the Jaina temples not only quarries from which to steal ready-made the pillars for their mosques, but as it were garments for the expression of religion that could be ‘made over’ for their use. As easily as an elder sister’s clothes are cut up and altered for the use of the younger, so conveniently were Jaina temples transformed for the appropriation of this newest arrival on the Indian scene. All that the victorious Mohammedans had to do was to make slight structural alterations.
‘By removing the principal cell and its porch from the centre of the court, and building up the entrances of the cells that surround it, a courtyard was at once obtained, surrounded by a double colonnade, which always was the typical form of a mosque. Still one essential feature was wanting— a more important side towards Mecca; this they easily obtained by removing the smaller pillars from that side, and re-erecting in their place the larger pillars of the porch, with their dome in the centre; and, if there were two smaller domes, by placing one of them at each end.’[1]
No original mosque the Mohammedans ever erected rivalled these ‘made-over’ temples for beauty. In the zenith of their prosperity Jaina architects had taught Hindu builders much; now in adversity they still influenced their persecutors, and the still too-little-known mosques of Aḥmadābād owe more of their unrivalled beauty to Jaina inspiration than to any other source.
But the Jaina did not only teach; like true scholars, they also learnt even from their opponents, and it is to the blending of the pure Jaina style with Mughal features that we owe modern Jaina architecture. The present writer was shown both at Ābu and Śatruñjaya on the interior of the roof of the temple courtyard miniature representations of Mohammedan tombs, which she was assured had been placed there to guard the shrines from the iconoclastic zeal of the conquerors. This, however, was only a small
- ↑ Fergusson, loc. cit., ii. 69.
