Jain Cave, Badami

The fourth of the rock-cut Badami cave temples, later in date than the Hindu caves beside it and carved with Tirthankara figures in the same sandstone cliff.

Badami was the Chalukya dynasty’s capital from the sixth century into the eighth, and its first three caves, cut into the same sandstone cliff, are Hindu — Vishnu foremost among them — and generally dated earlier. The fourth and last, this one, is Jain, cut in the seventh century under the same royal patronage that raised the others, with some further carving added as late as the twelfth.

At thirty-one feet wide and sixteen deep, it is modest next to the free-standing temples elsewhere in this directory, but its figures are unmistakable: Mahavira as the dedicatory image, with Parshvanatha and Bahubali carved alongside — one cave holding, in miniature, the same range of subjects a much larger Digambara temple complex would give separate shrines to.

Written for Jain Times. Corrections are welcome — see sources and licences.