heritage/ranakpur.jpg · 1200×800The temple was raised by Dharna Shah, a Porwal merchant of Ghanerao, who is said to have dreamt of a celestial vehicle, the Nalinigulma vimana, and wished to build its likeness in stone. Rana Kumbha of Mewar gave the land, and the village took his name. An inscription of 1439 CE credits the architect Depaka; other records put the beginning in 1389 and the finishing in the later 15th century, so the dates differ between accounts.
The plan is a chaumukha, four-faced: the sanctum opens on all four sides, and the white marble image of Rishabhanatha, about six feet tall, looks out in four directions. Around it spread 29 halls, 80 domes and, by tradition, 1,444 pillars, no two carved alike. Underground chambers were made in which images could be hidden in troubled times. Light moves through the open halls all day and keeps changing the colour of the marble.
Smaller shrines share the courtyard. The Parshvanatha temple keeps a panel in which the Tirthankara stands under a canopy of 1,008 serpent hoods whose tails cannot be traced to an end. There are shrines to Neminatha and Suparshvanatha, and a Surya temple stands nearby. The complex is looked after by the Anandji Kalyanji Trust, whose early twentieth-century repairs were praised in the Archaeological Survey's report of 1907–08.
