On the summit of Mount Abu the marble Jain shrines preserve the highest ideals of pure Hindu architecture. And from them may be deduced interesting evidence bearing upon the national character and creed. At a point where a lovely valley begins to close on an enormous plateau of granite, stands, warm and glowing, a mass of white marble. It is the four sacred shrines. Nine hundred years ago the most ancient of them was built by a merchant prince. The marble was not quarried from the mountain side, but it was transported some hundred miles and dragged up the steep mountain by a patient race to whom a century is but a day. Some years ago we were walking through a remote Deccan village and noticed a large stone pillar. richly carved, lying by the roadside. We asked its origin and destination. The Paid, or head village officer, told us it was intended for the porch of the temple on the steep cliff overlooking the hamlet two miles away. " The villagers drag it," he added, " on great festivals, and, oh ! Sahib, in my lifetime they have moved it a hundred yards." He was bordering on fifty. " And see how much carving they have done," and he pointed to some eight inches of rich decoration. The old Brahman priest who accompanied us noticed our look of surprise and wonderment, and said, " You English are in such a hurry. There is the age of brass and the age of iron. They come and they go. Others have come and gone their way, and so you will go. But the pillar will reach the temple." In this spirit were these marble shrines at Abu hewn into transparent strength and the shafts erected above the marble courtyards ; " the white cupolas rise like wreaths of sea foam in the dawn." The desire of the Jain is to at tain victory over all worldly desires to fill his soul, and so become divine. He therefore builds his temple to shut out the garish day and to give cool dark spaces shadowing forth the rest to which he looks forward. He filled the windows with marble tracery, through which the broken light falls, and a few beams fade away into the cell on to the image of the twenty-second deified saint, seated cross-legged and with folded hands. In the colonnade around are fifty-seven cells, and in each cell the identical image of the same god, with the same folded hands, with the same expression quiet, and so weary. It reveals the feelings of the worshippers, to whom salvation comes after eight births, when a man has started on the right road. And the first Jain of the long series of prehistoric prophets lived more than eight million years. " Patience is the highest good " is the Jain's creed.
About the centre of the Aravali range on the west side lies the British province of Ajmer-Merwara, surrounded by the Protected States of Rajpootana. The city, like the majority of Rajpoot cities, stands well. Situated in a fertile valley, it lies between a great lake and a magnificent isolated hill crowned with a fortress called Taragarh, the Home of the Stars. It is a spot which the first settlers would choose for a dwelling-place. It is a spot which, on account of its geographical position, the Muhammadan invaders would select as the centre of their operations against Rajpootana, and the dry climate of the plateau, three thousand feet above the sea, would be an attraction. Ajmer, " according to the traditional couplet and the poetic legends of its ancient princes, was visited by the first hostile forces which Islam sent across the Indus," and it became the favourite haunt of Moghuls and Pathans. Many are the traces of the heavy hand of the warriors and the conquerors who thought it glory and not shame to destroy the works of the Infidel and to turn them to the purpose of the believer.
The Arhai-din-ka-jhompra, or " the hut of two and a half days," is an example of how the Muhammadan conquerors took the chief Pagan shrines of a city as a trophy of their own faith. It is built on the western declivity of the mountain, and derives its name from its having occupied, as tradition tells, its magical builders only this short period in its erection. Tod, who gives a fine illustration of the " ancient Jain Temple at Ajmer," writes :—" The Temple is surrounded by a superb screen of Saracenic architecture, having the main front and gateway to the north. From its simplicity, as well as its appearance of antiquity, I am in clined to assign the screen to the first dynasty, the Ghorian Sultans, who evidently made use of native architects. The entrance arch is that wavy kind, characteristic of what is termed the Saracenic, whether the term be applied to the Alhambra of Spain or the Mosque of Delhi, and I am dis posed on close examination to pronounce it Hindu. The entire facade of this noble entrance, which I regret I cannot have engraved, is covered with Arabic inscriptions. But, unless my eye much deceived me, the small frieze over the apex of the arch contained an inscription in Sanscrit, with which Arabic has been commingled, both being unintelligible.
The remains of a minaret still maintain their position on the right flank of the gate, with a door and steps leading to it for the muezzim to call the faithful to prayers. A line of smaller arches of similar form composes the front of the screen. The design is chaste and beautiful, and the ma terial, which is a compact limestone of a yellow colour, ad mitting almost of as high a polish as the jaunc antique gave abundant scope to the sculptor." Fergusson endorses Tod's estimate of the beauty of the screen and its decoration. He writes :—" Nothing can exceed the taste with which the Cufic and Togra inscriptions are interwoven with the more purely architectural decoration, or the manner in which they give life and variety to the whole without ever inter fering with the constructive lines of the design. Nothing in Cairo or in Persia is so exquisite in detail, and nothing in Spain or Syria can approach them for beauty of surface decoration. Besides this, they are unique. Nowhere else could it be possible to find Muhammadan largeness of concep tion, combined with Hindu delicacy of ornamentation, carried out to the extent and in the same manner." The description of the pillared hall which now forms the mosque, given by Tod, is both picturesque and accurate. " Its plan is simple and consonant with all the more ancient temples of the Jains. It is an extensive saloon, the ceiling supported by a quad ruple range of columns, those of the centre being surmounted by a range of vaulted coverings, while the lateral portion, which is flat, is divided into compartments of the most elabor ate sculpture. But the columns are most worthy of atten tion ; they are unique in design, and, with the exception of the cave-temples, probably among the oldest now existing in India. On examining them, ideas entirely novel, even in Hindu art, are developed. Like all these portions of Hindu architecture their ornaments arc very complex, and the observer will not fail to be struck with their dissimilarity ; it was evidently a rule to make the ornaments of every part unlike the other, and this I have seen carried to great ex tent. There may be forty columns, but no two are alike. The ornaments of the base are peculiar, both as to form and execution ; the lozenges, with the rich tracery surmounting them, might be transferred not inappropriately to the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. The projections from the various parts of the shafts (which on a small scale may be compared to the corresponding projections of the columns in the Duomo at Milan) with the small niches still containing the statues, though occasionally mutilated, of the Pontiffs of the Jains, give them a character which strengthens the comparison. The ele gant Cilmacumpa, the emblem of the Hindu Ceres, with its pendant palmyra-branches, is here lost, as are many em blematical ornaments, curious in design and elegant in their execution. Here and there occurs a richly carved corbeille, which still further sustains the analogy between the two systems of architecture, and the capitals are at once strong and delicate." The central vault consists of a series of diminishing amulets (or rings), richly ornamented, con verging to the apex, from which projects a heavy stone pendentive carved in open work. Tod supposes that the Hindu shrine was built two centuries before Christ, but General Cunningham infers, " but with some hesitation," that most of the temples which furnished materials for the building of the great mosque must have been erected during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The great mosque, according to an inscription on one of the minarets, was completed during the reign (A.D. 1211-1236) of Altamish, a slave of Kutb-ud-den, to whom he had given his daughter in marriage, and was therefore built seven years later than the Kutb Mosque at Delhi.' In the latter the Mazinah, or Muezzin's tower, for calling the faithful to prayer, is a distinct and separate building, known as the celebrated Kutb Minar. But in the Ajmer Mosque we have the earliest example of a pair of Muezzin towers in two small minars, which are placed on the top of the screen wall over the great centre arch. " The tops of both of these minars are now ruined, but enough still remains to show that they were sloping hollow towers, with twenty-four faces or flutes alternately angular and circular, just like those of the Kutb Minar." All who have seen the two mosques will agree with Cun ningham that " in gorgeous prodigality of ornament, for beautiful richness of tracery, and endless variety of detail, in delicate sharpness of finish, and laborious accuracy of workmanship, all of which are due to the Hindu masons, these two grand Indian mosques may j ustly vie with the noblest buildings which the world has yet produced." We, however, consider that the mosque at Ajmer is far more interesting than its rival at old Delhi.