heritage/kundalpur-bade-baba.jpg · 1200×800This Kundalpur — not the Kundalpur near Nalanda that Digambaras honour as Mahavira's birthplace — is a small hill in Damoh district beside a pond called Vardhaman Sagar. Jain tradition remembers it as the place where Shridhar Kevali attained liberation, which makes it a siddhakshetra. Some sixty-three temples stand on the hill and at its foot; a record of 1884 counted twenty above and thirty below, so the complex has grown steadily.
The oldest shrine holds Bade Baba, 'the great elder': a seated image of Rishabhanatha about 15 feet high on a three-foot pedestal, flanked by two Parshvanatha figures of the same height. Scholars place the sculpture in the post-Gupta centuries, and the first temple around it in the eighth. That temple was rebuilt in 1701, after the Bhattaraka Surendrakirti renewed the site with support from the Bundela ruler Chhatrasal.
From 1997 a vast new stone temple in Nagara style rose here under the guidance of Acharya Vidyasagar (1946–2024), who spent long periods at Kundalpur. Bade Baba was carried into it on 17 January 2006, after a tense stand-off between the community and the district administration that ended peacefully. A Panch Kalyanaka celebration in 2022 drew enormous crowds, and the annual fair still follows Holi in March.
