Deogarh

Some thirty Digambara temples and a great many loose sculptures on a hill above the Betwa river.

A group of some thirty-one temples on a sandstone outcrop above the Betwa river in Uttar Pradesh, most of them small, several in ruins, and together forming one of the largest concentrations of early medieval Jain building anywhere in India.

The site was never abandoned so completely that it needed rediscovery in the way some archaeological Jain sites were, but it also never grew into a major living pilgrimage centre the way Shikharji or Palitana did — which is precisely why so much of the original stonework survives largely unaltered by later rebuilding.

Temple 12, the largest, carries an unusually complete set of Tirthankara images and dedicatory inscriptions that have made Deogarh one of the primary sites art historians use to date the development of Jain iconography in the region.

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