Mount Abu (Arbudachal): The Jain Tirtha and Its Shrines

Mount Abu, called Arbudachal in Jain literature, is a hill in the Aravalli range of southern Rajasthan and one of the principal Shvetambara tirthas of western India. What makes it a tirtha is not the hill alone but two groups of shrines on it — the five marble temples at Delvada (Delwara), and the older group higher up at Achalgarh.

Why the temples are here at all. Under Solanki rule, Abu was held by the Paramara feudatories of Chandravati and formed an integral part of Gujarat. That is the reason ministers of the Gujarat court — Vimala Shah, and two centuries later Vastupala and Tejapala — were able to build on a Rajasthan mountain at all. The same history shows in the language: the dialect of Abu and of the surrounding Sirohi region has structurally belonged to Gujarati rather than Rajasthani.

The five shrines at Delwara

The first two are the older and by far the more important, and both were damaged in more than one invasion. Inscriptions show the Vimala Vasahi was repaired at least twice before the modern restorations — so not every part of what stands today belongs to the age of its original construction.

Vimala Vasahi is entered by a domed porch on the east, facing a six-pillared pavilion called the Hastishala. Inside, an open corridor on a raised platform runs round all four sides of the courtyard, its outer edge lined with about fifty-four cells whose back walls form the outer wall of the shrine.

Luna Vasahi was built by Tejapala for the spiritual welfare of his wife Anupamadevi and his son Lavanyasimha — from whom it takes its name, Lunasimha-vasahika — with the permission of the Solanki emperor Bhima II and of Somasimha, the Paramara chief of Abu. Its mulanayaka is a large image of Neminatha in black basalt. Its Hastishala had to be fitted in by breaking the row of cells behind the main shrine, a departure from the Vimala Vasahi plan that Minister Yashovira, a learned contemporary of Vastupala, criticised at the time: the donors' portraits should have stood before their Jina, not at his back.

Pittalhar takes its name from pittala, brass. Its mulanayaka is a great brass Rishabhanatha of some 108 maunds, the gift of the ministers Sundara and Gada, installed in V.S. 1525; an inscription on the bronze names the artist, Sutradhara Deva.

The Chaumukha, or Kharatara Vasahi, stands apart from the rest — the other four share a single walled compound, and a narrow passage beside its entrance leads into the Chaumukha's own. It is three-storeyed, and the object of worship is a four-faced tower at the centre, with an image on each face visible from every storey.

Achalgarh

About three miles up the road from Delwara is Achalgarh, administered separately. Its Chaumukha shrine is known for the sheer size of its brass images: the great Adinatha there was installed by Samghavi Sahasa and cast in V.S. 1566 by Sutradhara Haradasa. The same trustees maintain the travellers' rest-house on the Delwara–Achalgarh road and the old Mahavirasvami shrine at the village of Oriya.

The literature of Abu

Muni Jayantavijaya gave the mountain a series of volumes — Arbudachal Pradakshina (Abu part 4), Arbudachal Pradakshina Jain Lekh Sandoh (Abu part 5, 1949), a collection of the region's Jain inscriptions, and Achalgadh Sachitra Aetihasik Varnan (Abu part 3, 1948). His guide Holy Abu was translated into English by U.P. Shah and published at Bhavnagar in 1954, and is still cited in the scholarly literature. Earlier, Jinaprabha Suri's Arbudakalpa, in the Vividha-tirthakalpa, treats Abu as a tirtha in its own right.

Related: Who Built the Jain Temples of Mount Abu, and When · Who built the Dilwara temples at Mount Abu and when