At Ahmedabad, on the other hand, the Ahmed Shahi Sultans of Gujerat
found themselves in presence of an advanced form of Hindu civilisation
as soon as they entered into possession of the kingdom which they
snatched from the general conflagration. Whether Ahmedabad, which is
still the modern capital of Gujerat and ranks only second to its
neighbour, Bombay, as a centre of the Indian cotton industry, occupies
or not the exact site of the ancient Karn[=a]vati, Gujerat was a
stronghold of Indian culture long before the Mahomedan invasions.
Architecture especially had reached a very high standard of development
in the hands of what is usually known as the Jaina school. This is a
misnomer, for the school was in reality the product of a period rather
than a sect, though Jainism probably never enjoyed anywhere, or at any
time, such political ascendancy as in Gujerat under its Rashtrakuta and
Solanki rulers from the ninth to the thirteenth century, and seldom has
there been such an outburst of architectural activity as amongst the
Jains of that period. To the present day the _salats_ or builders,
mostly Jains, have in their keeping, jealously locked away in iron-bound
chests in their temples, many ancient treatises on civil and religious
architecture, of which only a few abstracts have hitherto been published
in Gujerati, but, as may be seen at Ahmedabad, in the great Jaina temple
of Hathi Singh, built in the middle of the last century at a cost of one
million sterling, they have preserved something of the ancient
traditions of their craft.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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