Kunthalgiri

A hill siddhakshetra in Marathwada, held to be the place of liberation of Kulbhushan and Deshbhushan.

Kulbhushan and Deshbhushan appear in the Digambara Ramayana — the Padma Purana of Acharya Ravishena, which tells the epic with Jain rather than Vedic framing. Two royal princes who took Digambara asceticism, they are said to have faced enemies from a past life on this hill and to have been helped past them by Rama, Lakshmana and Sita themselves, on the way to the omniscience that ended in liberation here — which is what makes Kunthalgiri a siddhakshetra, a place of liberation, rather than simply a hill with old temples on it.

The hill has a more recent event of the same kind: in 1955 Acharya Shantisagar, one of the most consequential Digambara monastic reformers of the twentieth century, died in the ascetic’s fast known as sallekhana at Kunthalgiri, and a memorial near the Chandraprabhu temple marks the place.

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