 So the first time I went to Gudrat almost 10 years ago, I got into raptures about the beautiful monuments dating back to the times of the Chaurukya dynasty, the famous Sun Temple of Modera. Here, the great stepwell of Patan, or the Jain Temple of Taranga, made on me the greatest impression with their elegant proportions and their delicate sculptures. Since then, I have had many occasions to travel to other parts of India and to discover many other styles of civil or religious architecture from various periods. But the so-called Maru-Gurjarath style from the Northwest has remained one of my favorites. Besides, the medieval texts from Gudrat and Rajasthan I had decided to specialize in are roughly contemporaneous with these monuments. And they could incidentally allude to their construction, embellishment, or decay. For instance, the allegorical drama I translated in my doctoral thesis, the Mohara Ja Parajaya, or Defeat of King Delusion by Yash Spala, alludes to several Jain temples that the famous Jain King Kumarapala had built in his capital city and other parts of his kingdom. In order to understand this text, I had to get acquainted with the technical aspects of Indian religious architecture, and that is how I came to read different studies written as a subject by renowned scholars such as Madhusudandaki. For describing the complex structure of Indian temples, most of these scholars have made use of a wide range of technical works, or, sorry, they have found in various kinds of texts from ancient and medieval India. Indeed, architectural matters have been specifically dealt with in a great amount of treatises on building or craft the Vastu Shastra and the Shilpa Shastra. They can otherwise have been included, among other topics, in religious works such as the sectarian Agama or the encyclopedic Puranas. Since the words pertaining to the architectural technicalities are often missing in modern dictionary, specialists have generally appended a glossary to their studies on the Indian temple. These glossaries can be very convenient and helpful tools for describing a building or grasping the meaning of a difficult passage, but they present one major disadvantage in that they rely on sources which may post-date the monument or the text under consideration. Thus, in an article on the Western Indian Jain temple, Madhusudandaki analyzed this particular type of building in 20 chief constituent parts that he named in conformity to medieval sources from Gujarat and Rajasthan. Yet, it must be noted that, accepting a fragmentary Vastu Shastra and another manual on architecture called the Vastu Vidya, all these texts were written after the end of the 12th century. Consequently, the terminology that Daki drew from them was probably news from the 13th century onwards, and one can safely make use of it for analyzing Jain temples, such as the famous ones built by Vastupala and Tejaspala at Girnar or Abu. But as regards earlier buildings, it may be anachronistic. And for that reason, it must be handled with caution. For instance, the Jain temple of Taranga, mentioned above, was built in the second part of the 12th century that is before the composition of most manuals on Jain religious architecture from Western India. Actually, it is one of the rare surviving parts of an ambitious architectural project that King Kumarapala launched between his conversion to Jainism in 1160 and his death in 1173. According to his spiritual teacher and court poets among Hemachandra, Kumarapala made the earth adorned with temples of Girnar in almost every village. In the Kumarapala Pratiboda, or Enlightenment of Kumarapala, a procreate work achieved by the Jain poet Somaprabha in 1185, the king in person says, I quote, now that I have understood the true nature of God, I will order the construction of Jain temples everywhere. End quote. Most of these temples were called Kumaravihara after his own name. And Jain authors willingly extolled their beauty in brief or at length. Besides Somaprabha and Yashaspala, who flourished under the reign of Kumarapala successors, there are two court poets of Kumarapala who dedicated a whole poem to the most important of this Kumaravihara, the one which stood in the capital city of Patan. Vardamana wrote a Kumaravihara prajasti or eulogy of the Kumaravihara. And Ramachandra composed a Kumaravihara shataka, or century, or hundred verses on the Kumaravihara. What I intend to do now is to see whether these poets merely relied on conventional images for describing these monuments, or if they gave an accurate account of their shape and decoration by using specific words. Thus, it could be ascertained to which extent the vocabulary recorded by later treatises was already in use during the 12th century, or if there were other words for describing the Jain sacred complex. That the descriptions of Kumarapala's temples are informed by the codes of Kavya style is an evidence. Indeed, the court poets had to display their political skills and to present in the most original way these buildings in order to celebrate the magnificence of the king. Therefore, their texts abound in puns and variations on stereotype motifs which were supposed to enhance the beauty of the monuments. The way King Kumarapala himself depicts the great Kumaravihara of Patan in Somaprabha's poem, is highly representative of these embellishments. I quote, on my comment, has been erected here the Kumaravihara, lofty, charming like the Mount Ashtapada, endowed with 24 Jain shrines. It's golden amalasara makes it yellow so that it looks like the Mount Meru and the golden flagstaffs, which it supports shine like wishing trees. Its pricks being the golden pillars, its leaves, the silken canopy's drone up, its flowers, the hanging strings of pearls, its fruits, the golden water pots, the genuine creeper of beauty shines in this place, sprinkled by the thousand waves of brightness coming from Sri Parashvah's body. Made out of moonstone, the main image of Parashvah installed there makes the people's logicize and fall like the image of the moon. As for the many other images made out of gold, silver, or brass, is there anyone they do not maze? The way the poet insists here on the height of the temple is typical of the lottery style. The Shikara, or tower, which rises above the main image of the temple, is usually said to touch the sky or liken to the highest peaks. Accordingly, Soma Prabhak here compares the Kumara Vihara with two famous mountains, the Ashtapada and the Meru. Besides the height, another feature of the temple highlighted by this comparison is its preciousness. Since in gene cosmology, mountains are said to be made out of gold, silver, and burial. No ordinary stone appears in the poems as building material for a gene worship place. On the contrary, all its constituent parts are supposed to be built with various kinds of metals or precious stones. In his poem, Ramachandra mentions Sapphire, Emerald, Ruby, Katsai Gem, and so on. The colored rays emitted by these materials inspire the poets with many striking images. A special mention must be made of moonstones and sandstones. According to poetic conventions, the former are said to melt when touched by the moon rays, while the second allegedly emit sparkles when touched by the sun rays. A lot of images based on these properties can be found in Ramachandra's poem. Notwithstanding the conventional devices poets had to use in order to extoll the beauty of the temples built by Kumara Pala, one may find faithful accounts of either general layout of the Jain temple or the details of its ornamentation. Indeed, poets were obviously acquainted with the technical vocabulary that architect and other artisans involved in the building of temples made use of. One may note, for instance, that the right words are used in particular descriptions for the constituent parts of the tower that stands above the main image of the sacred complex. Not only the spire is called the shikara, but the subsidiary spires or little turrets, you can see around the main one, are also accurately called shringa. As regards the cogged wheel here, which crowns the shikara, Somaprabha calls it the mirroble on fruit, amalasara, in conformity with the treatises. This amalasara is separated from the shikara by a narrower section, which we cannot see on this picture, that the theoreticians call the neck griva, and in keeping with this anthropomorphic vision of the temple of the tower, the summit of the shikara which supports the neck is called the shoulder skanda. Ramachandra uses either this word or its synonymous amsa and evokes many times the staff danda here, which springs from this shoulder and supports the banner dvajah or ketu. The poets also lay stress on specific details of the building such as the various sculptures which decorate its outer walls and its superstructures. The water pots kalasha or kumbha are mentioned in Somaprabha's work as well as in other poems, and Ramachandra devotes many stanzas of his poem to the lion figures or to the images of celestial ladies. So here for instance, lion and the shukanasa of the shikara. For instance, Phyllis Granov has related one of these stanzas by Ramachandra which describes a young woman annoyed by a monkey to sculptures preserved in extant monuments. This picture of my slide was taken at the step well of Patan, and here you can read the stanza in Phyllis Granov's translation. There in that temple, the statue of a lady who struggled to hold fast to her girdle as a monkey untied his knot, made young galants feel desire and confirmed the steadfast in their rejection of sensual delights. It disgusted the pious and made all ladies feel embarrassed while it made young men laugh and young girls wonder. The exactitude of the vocabulary can also be noticed when Ramachandra mentions the torana or nominal arch erected within the precincts of the temple, or when he calls the lintel which goes over the door frame and utaranga in conformity with architectural treatises. Elsewhere, Ramachandra correctly employs the word Jali for designating the famous latest windows which are a testimony to the craftsmanship of India and artists. So this is an example from taranga. And another instance of Ramachandra's acquaintance with architectural science can be found when he explains does the perfumed water used by devotees for bathing the image of the Gina goes out of the temple, I quote, by the curved body of a Makara whose mouth is a water channel made out of a cut's eye. The monster shaped pranali or water channel, the poet evokes here was actually a common feature of medieval temples. As instance, by this picture taken at the temple of Taranga as well. So you can see the curved body of this Makara on the northern side of the temple. Moreover, these poetic descriptions of temples are useful not only for ascertaining whether such or such technical words were employed at an earlier date, they may also improve our knowledge of this scientific vocabulary. Indeed, poets use some words which may have been endowed with a technical meaning although they are missing in the glossaries set up by modern scholars. For instance, in the latter quotation, Ramachandra apparently used the word Tata, slope, in order to express the curved aspect of the water channel of the body of the Makara. Even though the Sanskrit commentator of the text pretends that the word Tata is merely intended to enhance the beauty of the text, Tata Shabdaha Shobartaha. That Tata could function as a geometrical word referring to a curved figure is further proven by other stanzas of Ramachandra's poem, wherein its feminine counterpart, Tati, applies to the curved spire characteristic of the Nagara type of temple. Another interesting point is that no occurrence can be found in these poems of the word Jagati which designates in Vastushastra the platform of the temple. Instead, Ramachandra uses many times the word Vedi which means altar in a Vedic context. In architecture, it usually refers to the lowest part of the temple outer wall. This is this part. But in the poem of Ramachandra, it is obvious that Vedi means the whole surface on which the temple stands like an offering on an altar. So I think that this is quite interesting to see that a word so commonly accepted as Jagati is actually missing in this text from the 12th century. And one last example of what these poems teach us about the technical vocabulary concerns the term Vitana. In most glossaries and studies on architecture, Vitana is said to mean ceiling. Yet in Ramachandra's poem, Vitana seems to be synonymous with chandrodhaya which refers to a canopy or hanging piece of colored cloth. For instance, in one stanza, some people believe that the outer walls of the main temple are painted because of the reflection on their polished surface of the multicolored Vitana. Since the poet talks about outer walls, it is impossible that a ceiling stands in the air whereas nothing prevents from thinking that canopies were stretched between the temple and the surrounding cloister. To conclude, the giant poets did not content themselves with describing temples by means of conventional images although they mastered the codes of Kavya style. They did know the technical vocabulary of architecture and use it for detailing all the splendors of these monuments. In all likelihood, Ramachandra, Somaprabha and the other poets met artists and architects at the court of their patron as suggested by references to them by Ramachandra in his poem. He talks about Shilpi and Sutradhara, for instance. Therefore, this text should be more carefully taken into account for expending our knowledge of the Jain sacred architecture from Western India. Thank you.