ABSTRACT
The idea of space within and around a temple makes for an interesting study, as it can reveal the larger connection between the community and the religious institutions while throwing light on the nature of public life and imagination and constituting a landscape. In this chapter, the Jaina Basadis have been studied from the perspective of their spatial setting in the 14th to 15th-century settlement of Moodabidri, Karnataka. This setting has been explored from the point of view of the residual space around the Jain temple complex itself. The finding points towards an idea of public place that seems symptomatic of unmediated access and relationship enjoyed by the community with the religious institution as opposed to the multi-layered and hierarchical public spaces surrounding typical Hindu temple in the same period. The second aspect of the investigation is from the perspective of engagement of the settlement and its public places with their immediate natural landscape. The disengagement and lack of acknowledgement of elements of nature in the Jain settlement and in the public places point towards a rather distant view of nature, far removed from the world of humans. This again suggests an instructive contrast with the typical Hindu temple-towns’ engagement with elements of nature in the form of ghats and tanks.
