The basadi is the Jain temple in the Digambara usage of Karnataka and the Deccan, and its name and its images alike carry the distinct character of the southern, sky-clad tradition.
Dwelling and shrine
The word derives from vasati, a dwelling, and originally denoted the lodging attached to a temple where wandering ascetics could stay, which records the link between the temple and the mendicants it served. The basadi houses images of the Tirthankaras carved in the Digambara manner, unclothed and unadorned, with downcast inlaid-free eyes, expressing the total renunciation that the Digambara position holds essential, in visible contrast to the ornamented images of the Svetambara derasar.
The southern heartland
The basadi is the temple form of the Jain communities of the Deccan plateau, where Digambara Jainism was long established under royal patronage, and the region preserves some of the oldest and most important Jain sites. The colossal monolithic image of Bahubali at Shravanabelagola, bathed once in some years in a great ceremony, stands at the centre of this world, and the surrounding basadis record centuries of Jain presence in the south. The temple thus marks a geography as well as a doctrine: the basadi of the Deccan against the derasar of the west, two regional forms of a single tradition divided over the depiction of its own saints.