Nakoda

A desert pilgrimage centre built around a Parshvanatha image, heavily visited from Gujarat and Rajasthan.

A Parshvanatha temple in the Thar’s eastern edge, in Rajasthan’s Barmer district, and one of the few major Jain pilgrimage sites where a folk deity — Nakoda Bhairav — draws nearly as many visitors as the Tirthankara the temple is dedicated to.

Bhairav is a guardian figure rather than a canonical part of Jain doctrine, and his shrine sits apart from the main temple; the popularity of his worship here is a long-running point of tension within the tradition’s own understanding of what belongs at a Tirthankara’s temple, echoed at Mahudi’s Ghantakarna Mahavir some distance to the west.

The temple town has grown around the pilgrimage traffic itself — dharamshalas, a large complex of guest accommodation, and a scale of infrastructure unusual for so remote a location, funded almost entirely by pilgrim donation.

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