Place · Chaumukha Jain temple · India
Ranakpur
The 15th-century Chaumukha Jain temple of Adinath at Ranakpur in Pali district, Rajasthan, built by the merchant Dharna Shah under the patronage of the Mewar king Rana Kumbha, completed in 1458 — the largest Jain temple in India by area. The complex rises on 1,444 carved marble pillars, no two alike, arranged around a central four-faced sanctum open on all four sides. The acoustic effects of the pillar hall — a word spoken at the sanctum carries to specific points along the perimeter — are a continuing architectural puzzle. Ranakpur sits in a fold of the Aravallis 90 kilometres from Udaipur and is a working pilgrimage site, not a monument.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Svetambara Jain tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 25.115, 73.472
Connections (2)
- PatronageDharanā Shāh
Dharanā Shāh, minister to Rana Kumbha, built Ranakpur from about 1437 with the rana's land grant and his own community's money, and the inscription of 1439 records it. The Jain pattern again: the king gives permission and a name, and merchants and ministers pay for the stone. Tradition says he dreamt of a celestial vehicle and rejected the architect Depā's drafts until one matched it, which is how a building with 1,444 unrepeating pillars is explained.
- Architectural modelDilwāra Jain temples, Mount Ābū
Dilwara and Ranakpur are the two marble peaks of western Indian Jain architecture, about two hundred kilometres apart and two centuries apart, and Ranakpur takes what Dilwara does and multiplies it: fourteen hundred and forty-four pillars, no two carved alike, on a four-faced plan with twenty-nine halls. Both were paid for by merchants and ministers rather than by rulers — Vimal Shah and Vastupala at Abu, Dharana Shah at Ranakpur.
On these journeys
Sources
Ranakpur Jain Temple
Open Ranakpur in the repository →