Mirpur Jain Temple

One of the oldest marble temples in western India, and a plausible ancestor of the carving later perfected at Dilwara.

Built in the ninth century under Solanki rule, Mirpur is widely held to be the oldest surviving marble monument in Rajasthan — which puts it two full centuries ahead of Dilwara and gives its carving a real claim to being the tradition Dilwara and Ranakpur later carried further, rather than one more site sharing their style by coincidence.

The temple was destroyed under Mahmud Begada in the thirteenth century and rebuilt and renovated in the fifteenth; an inscription surviving in the temple, dated 1162, records some of the history of the fortified village of Mirpur itself. Its Parshvanatha mandapa, standing on a raised plinth with carved pillars and an encircling parikrama gallery, draws far fewer visitors than Dilwara despite the priority of its carving — remote even by the standards of the Aravallis, in the same Sirohi district as Jirawala.

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