IndragiriThe statue of Gomateshwara

The following is an extract from the travel book A River of Life: Travels through Modern India.

The town of Sravanabelagola is busier than its size warrants, swelled, like many such towns, by a steady influx of pilgrims. Its ramshackle homes, a haphazard cluster of terracotta roofed structures, lies nestled between the two outcrops of rock which define the northern and southern borders of the town, Indragiri on one side, Chandragiri on the other. It is the hill of Indragiri, and its 800 foot statue of the Jain saint Gomateshwara at the summit, that make Sravanabelagola a centre of pilgrimage.

As I pad barefoot up to the summit - the usual rule, no chappals allowed - I am reminded of the town of Gwalior, near Delhi, with its larger-than-life carvings in the cliff face, like a race of supermen who had sprouted fully-formed from the rock. There is only a single figure here, representing Gomateshwara, son of the first Jain tirthankara Adinatha. At 17 metres in height, the statue is on a par with the figures at Gwalior, although unlike those it was sculpted from a free-standing block of rock, the largest such sculpture in the Subcontinent. It has also, like most other monuments of the South and unlike many of those of the North, been protected from the bigotry of marauding Muslims and Mughals, with the result that, unlike the mighty men of Gwalior, Gomateshwara is handsomely endowed both with facial features and genitalia.

Big-shouldered, wide-hipped, it is an imposing figure. Coconuts have been set at its feet. They look like poppy seeds next to the big big toe. All Jain images are shown meditating either in the lotus position or body-upright, always naked to reflect their renunciation of worldly ways. Gomateshwara is shown standing. He had meditated in a forest following an almost murderous encounter with his brother which had awakened him to the brutality inherent in all men, and he had stood in the forest so long that vines had grown and twined themselves about his arms and legs, ants had built nests around his feet, all details which are recreated here, in stone.

According to Jain wisdom, we live in an age of decreasing purity, in consequence of which the stature of man is also decreasing. In the time of Adinatha and his son, Gomateshwara, men were giants; hence the often grand scale of depictions of Jain saints and tirthankaras, the crossing makers of the Jain religion, also called jinas, from the Hindi jainas, meaning victors, saviours who have succeeded in crossing over life's stream and making a path for others to follow. As well as physical stature, life spans are also said to be decreasing with the "turning of the wheel" of this base age of ours. In addition to being fabled giants, Adinatha and his son are said to have lived millions of years. Mahavira, the 24th and last tirthankara and founder of the Jain religion - a contemporary of Gautama Buddha, who preached austerity as the way to enlightenment instead of the Buddha's more lenient Middle Way between luxury and asceticism - had had a considerably more human life span, a mere seventy two years.