Hutheesing Temple

A merchant-built temple of 1848 in Ahmedabad, its courtyard ringed by fifty-two subsidiary shrines.

Commissioned by the Hutheesing family and completed in 1848, in the decade after a famine during which the building is said to have been continued partly to keep craftsmen in work.

The plan is a double-storeyed central shrine to Dharmanatha, the fifteenth Tirthankara, inside a courtyard lined with fifty-two smaller shrines — the number recurs across Svetambara temple building. A free-standing Mahavira column was added in the twentieth century, modelled on the Kirti Stambh at Chittor.

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