Kumbhariya

Five marble temples in a quiet valley, contemporary with Dilwara and carved by the same tradition of workshops.

Five temples in a village in northern Gujarat, built in roughly the same centuries and the same marble tradition as Dilwara and Ranakpur, and often described by visitors as a quieter, less-visited cousin to both.

The Neminatha temple, the largest of the five, carries carving comparable in ambition to the Dilwara ceilings, though on a smaller scale and with a fraction of the visitors — Kumbhariya’s relative obscurity has left its carving in places crisper than the more famous sites, simply from centuries of lighter footfall.

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