The Rajasthan and Gujarat style reached its climax in the two jain temples at Mount Abu. Justify.
A beautiful variant of Nagara style is found in Rajputana and Gujarat. It is characterised by a free use of columns, carved with all imaginable richness, strut brackets, and exquisite marble ceilings with cusped pendants. The climax of the medieval architecture of the Rajasthan and Gujarat style was reached in the two Jaina Temples at Mount Abu. These two temples are known as Vimala Vasahi and Luna Vasahi.
These two temples were built respectively by Vastupala and Tejpala, the two ministers of the later Solanki rulers of Gujarat. The Vimala Vasahi is dedicated to Adinatha. It shows a lately added entrance hall and a rectangular pavilion showing portraits, sculptures mounted on elephants. Prithvipala, a descendant of Vimala added the magnificent assembly hall in c. 1150.
The hall has lavishly ornamented pillars surmounted by attic sections, with multi cusped tarana arches in between. The arches are heavily ornamented and support a ceiling of ten diminishing rings loaded with bewildering wealth of carvings of which the most impressive are the 16 figures of the Vidyadevis and the magnificently designed central pendant. The rings are further decorated with friezes of elephants, goddesses, dancers and musicians, horseriders and female dancers, alternating with cusped and coffered courses.The ceilings and the arches of the lateral bays of the assembly hall are lavishly embellished with carvings including narrative and mythological reliefs.
The temple of Luna Vasahi, built two centuries later, illustrates further efflorescence of the style, accompanied by a richer elaboration of decoration. Its ceiling is slightly smaller in diameter but is carried equally lavishly and culminates in a larger and more delicately ornamented central pendant, revealing the finest filigree work in metal. These temples constitute marvels of stone chiselling and with their minutely carved doorframes, niches, pillars, architraves and ceilings excel the rest of the ornamented temples of India. Lavish ornamentation was carried here to an extreme without any regard being paid to the structural propriety or proportion.
It must be noted that these two temples at Abu are popularly known as Dilwara temples