heritage/ayodhya.jpg · 1200×800Ayodhya — Saketa in older texts, Vinita in Jain ones — stands on the Sarayu in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Jain tradition holds that five Tirthankaras were born here: Rishabhanatha the first, and after him Ajitanatha, Abhinandananatha, Sumatinatha and Anantanatha. Canonical Jain texts describe shrines in the city, and both Parshvanatha and Mahavira are said to have preached at Saketa, so the place held Jain memory from very early times.
Because a Tirthankara's birth is a kalyanaka, each birthplace in the city is marked by a shrine. The Digambara kshetra at Raiganj, known as Badi Murti, is dominated by a 31-foot standing marble image of Rishabhadeva, installed in 1965 under the guidance of Acharya Deshbhushan Maharaj; smaller shrines, called tonks, mark the birth sites of the other four. Aryika Gyanmati Mataji guided later building at the kshetra.
The Svetambara temples go back to Kesari Singh, treasurer of the Nawab of Faizabad, who built five shrines to mark the five birthplaces at the sites tradition identifies in the old city. Archaeology is thinner. Images of Tirthankaras dated between about 650 and 1050 CE show that Jain activity continued, and naked terracotta figures found near Ayodhya in the 1970s recall the Lohanipur torso — though they carry no Jain marks and cannot be claimed with certainty.
