Palitana

The hill

Shatrunjaya rises above the town of Palitana, reached by a stairway of some 3,500 steps. Along the ridge stand groups of temples enclosed in walled compounds called tuks, built and maintained by different lineages and merchant families. The count is usually given as more than eight hundred, which makes it the densest concentration of Jain temples anywhere.

The principal temple is dedicated to Rishabhanatha, whom tradition holds to have preached on the hill. Most of the surviving fabric is of the sixteenth century and later, the earlier temples having been destroyed and rebuilt more than once.

Practice

No one stays on the hill overnight; pilgrims climb and descend within the day, and the temples are left to the tirthankaras. The ascent is undertaken barefoot, and some pilgrims make the climb repeatedly in a single season as a vow.

Palitana town is also notable for a municipal prohibition on the slaughter and sale of meat, adopted after Jain campaigning, which has made it a reference point in wider Indian arguments about religious restrictions on food.

Position in the tradition

For Svetambara Jains, Shatrunjaya is the most sacred of the tirthas, and pilgrimage to it is a defining act of lay devotion. Its counterpart in the Digambara world is Shravanabelagola, and in eastern India Sammed Shikhar on Parasnath hill, where twenty of the twenty-four tirthankaras are held to have attained liberation.