It is in consequence of the Jains believing to a greater extent than the other Indian sects in the efficacy of temple-building as a means of salvation, that their architectural performances bear so much larger a proportion to their numbers than those of other religions. It may also be owing to the fact that nine out of ten, or ninety-nine in a hundred, of the Jaina temples are the gifts of single wealthy individuals of the middle classes, that these buildings generally are small and deficient in that grandeur of proportion that marks the buildings undertaken by royal command or belonging to important organised communities. It may, however, be also owing to this that their buildings are more elaborately finished than those of more national importance. When a wealthy individual of the class who build these temples desires to spend his money on such an object, he is much more likely to feel pleasure in elaborate detail and exquisite finish than on great purity or grandeur of conception. All these peculiarities are found in a more marked degree at Palitana than at almost any other known place, and, fortunately for the student of the style, extending through all the ages during which it flourished. Some of the temples are as old as the 11th century, and they are spread pretty evenly over all the intervening period down to the present century. But the largest number and some of the most important are now erecting or were erected in the present century or in the memory of living men. Fortunately, too, these modern examples by no means disgrace the age in which they are built. Their sculptures are inferior, and some of their details are deficient in meaning and expression; but, on the whole, they are equal, or nearly so, to the average examples of earlier ages. It is this that makes Palitana one of the most interesting places that can be named for the philosophical student of architectural art, inasmuch as he can there see the various processes by which cathedrals were produced in the Middle Ages, carried on on a larger scale than almost anywhere else, and in a more natural manner. It is by watching the methods still followed in designing buildings in that remote locality that we become aware how it is that the uncultivated Hindu can rise in architecture to a degree of originality and perfection which has not been attained in Europe since the Middle Ages, but which might easily be recovered by following the same processes. GIRNAR.