Jain Temples of Champaner

A group of Jain shrines on Pavagadh hill, older than the Sultanate capital later built at its foot and now part of the wider Champaner-Pavagadh UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Jain temples on Pavagadh hill are the oldest structures in a heritage site now dominated by newer, more famous neighbours: a group raised in the thirteenth century under Vastupala, minister to the Vaghela Solanki rulers of Gujarat and a major Jain patron of his era, on a hill the tradition counts among four sacred regions where liberation can be attained.

Two centuries later, in 1484, the Sultan Mahmud Begada took Pavagadh from its Khichi Chauhan rulers and built the new capital of Champaner at its base — mosques, palaces and a fort raised over some twenty years, the city briefly renamed Muhammadabad in his honour before falling into ruin after Humayun took it in 1535. The Jain temples were not part of that building programme; they simply happened to already be standing on the hill it was built beneath, and now share the same UNESCO listing as the Islamic and Hindu structures that came after them.

Written for Jain Times. Corrections are welcome — see sources and licences.