Papauraji

Also Papora Ji

A Bundelkhand siddhakshetra a short distance from Ahar Kshetra, its cluster of temples counted among the region’s ancient places of liberation.

Papauraji — also called Pampapur, and reckoned "the city of temples" for holding some 108 shrines — is older than eight centuries by its own inscriptions: two of its three principal Adinatha images carry dates corresponding to 1145, making them among the oldest datable objects in this stretch of Bundelkhand. A further inscription from 1784 records the site already recognised as a tirtha by that point, and the main Adinatha temple was itself renovated in 1718 of the Vikram era.

The principal image, a black-stone Adinatha under three feet tall, is modest next to the standing colossi elsewhere in this directory — a reminder that a site’s standing as a siddhakshetra rests on its liberation tradition and the age of its worship, not on the scale of what was built to house it.

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