Tirumalai

A hill site with cave shrines, murals and a Neminatha figure that is the tallest Jain image in Tamil Nadu.

A granite hill in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai district carrying one of the largest Jain reliefs in South India: a seated Neminatha, roughly sixteen feet, cut directly into the rock face rather than raised as a free-standing statue.

Rock-cut Tamil Jain sites of this kind cluster in the region between the eighth and twelfth centuries, when Jain ascetic communities held a significant presence in the Tamil country before the Bhakti movements of Saivism and Vaishnavism absorbed much of the ground Jainism had held. Tirumalai’s scale — the relief, several smaller shrines and a stepped tank — makes it one of the more substantial survivals of that older Tamil Jain landscape.

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