Varkana Parshvanath Temple

A marble temple in a small Pali district village, its Parshvanatha image and carved mandapa drawing pilgrims well beyond the village’s size.

Varkana carries the same origin story told at several other sites in this directory: the Parshvanatha image was found buried in the ground by a shepherd, and the local Jain community built a temple around it once it was recovered — a recurring pattern across Rajasthan’s Jain landscape rather than a single unusual event, but independently attested here by an inscription dated to 1211 in the Vikram era. In the sixteenth century, under Maharana Kumbha, a Shrimal merchant rebuilt the temple on a larger scale, adding fifty-two subsidiary shrines around the main sanctum.

Varkana is one of five sites making up the Gorwad Panch Tirth, a traditional pilgrimage circuit through this stretch of Rajasthan alongside Ranakpur, Muchhal Mahavir, Narlai and Nadol — grouped, like the Karnataka basadi trail and the Bihar Mahavir circuit elsewhere in this directory, because pilgrims and the tradition itself travel them together rather than because a map happens to place them near each other.

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