Dilwara Temple

Seen from outside, the Dilwara temples hardly hint at what waits within: plain walls, a modest gateway, a walled compound among wooded hills just above the town of Mount Abu. Step inside and almost every surface turns into white marble worked so finely that ceilings look like lace and pillars like stacked jewellery. The group of five Svetambara Jain temples is counted among the five chief pilgrimage sites of that tradition, and it is the most celebrated example of the Solanki, or Māru-Gurjara, style of western India, a style for which pure white marble later became almost a requirement.

The oldest shrine, Vimal Vasahi, was raised around 1031 by Vimal Shah, a minister of the Chaulukya king Bhima I, and is dedicated to Rishabhanatha, the first tirthankara. Its central sanctuary sits in an open court ringed by a corridor of small cells, and its domed hall carries the sixteen goddesses of learning. A century later a descendant added the Hastishala, a hall of carved elephants bearing members of the founder's family. Luna Vasahi followed in 1230, built for Neminatha by the brothers Vastupala and Tejpal, ministers of the Vaghela rulers, in memory of a third brother. It repeats the plan of the older temple but pushes the carving further: in the main hall a great pendant drops from the central dome, circled by bands of seated tirthankaras and hundreds of tiny monks. The three later temples are smaller. The Pittalhar shrine takes its name from a huge brass-alloy image of Rishabhanatha cast in the 1460s; the three-storey Parshvanatha temple of 1458–59 is the tallest of the group, its grey stone walls covered with dancing figures and guardian deities; the little Mahavira temple of 1582 has porch paintings added in 1764.

The temples were damaged in 1311 during Alauddin Khilji's campaigns and repaired within a decade, and they were restored again in 1906 and between 1950 and 1965, which is why older marble now shows a warm yellow patina beside newer, whiter stone. A well-known story holds that the carvers were paid in gold by the weight of the marble dust they scraped away, an image that captures how patiently the stone was thinned. Mount Abu itself, at about 1,220 metres, is Rajasthan's only hill station, a plateau in the Aravalli Range long used as a cool retreat and dotted with Hindu and Jain shrines and the lake of Nakki.

Getting there

The temples lie about 2 km from the centre of Mount Abu. The nearest airport is Maharana Pratap Airport at Udaipur (UDR), about 119 km away in a straight line. The railhead for the hill is Abu Road, at the foot of the plateau, on the main line between Delhi and Ahmedabad.