Place · Solanki Jain hill temple · India
Tāraṅga Jain temple
Also known as Taranga, Taranga hill, Ajitanatha temple
Kumarapala's Ajitanatha temple of about 1165 on a hill in the Aravalli foothills, the largest single Solanki Jain shrine and one of very few that survived the Gujarat sultanate intact — a sanctum under a tall shikhara with a colossal white marble Ajitanatha inside.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Patron dynasty
- Solanki / Chaulukya
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.183, 72.758
Worth knowing
The hill carries Jain, Buddhist and Digambara claims at once: Svetambara temples on the main summit, Digambara shrines below, and rock-cut niches on Taranmata hill that are read as Buddhist Tara images, which is where the hill's name is usually traced from.
Connections (2)
- Solanki GujaratTaranga hill
Tāranga's Ajitnātha and the Kumbhāriā group are Solanki Jain work of the same generations as Modherā's sun temple and Rāni-kī-Vāv, by the same tradition of masons. Kumārapāla, who built Tāranga, converted to Jainism under Hemachandra — which is why a Hindu dynasty's greatest Jain temple exists at all. Kumārapāla also made Gujarat the one medieval Indian kingdom to legislate ahimsā across its whole territory, banning animal slaughter and hunting by royal order.
- Solanki GujaratDilwāra Jain temples, Mount Ābū
Dilwāra, Kumbhāriā and Tāranga are the three Solanki-period marble Jain groups of north Gujarat, built within about two centuries by the same tradition of masons who raised Modherā and Rāni-kī-Vāv. The dynasty was Hindu; the money at all three was Jain. Kumbhāriā's five temples stand almost unvisited beside the Ambājī pilgrimage, which passes within a kilometre of them and takes no notice.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Taranga Jain temple”. Hemachandra’s Dvyashrayakavya and the Prabandhachintamani; Jutta Jain-Neubauer, The Stepwells of Gujarat (1981).
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