Rajasthan's only hill station and the Jain marble miracle — Dilwara Temples carved in white marble so fine the figures inside have translucent fingers and the ceilings have no equal in the world
Mount Abu (pop. 22,000) sits at 1,220 meters on the Aravalli Range in southern Rajasthan — the only hill station in the desert state, and unique on the Indian subcontinent for the Dilwara Temples (11th–13th centuries CE), a complex of five Jain temples considered the finest examples of marble carving anywhere in the world. The Vimal Vasahi (1031 CE) and Luna Vasahi (1230 CE) temples were built by Gujarati merchants at such extraordinary expense that artisans were reportedly paid in gold equal to the weight of marble chips removed. The ceiling of the Luna Vasahi's central dome — a pendant chan…
Mount Abu's history is inseparable from the Chahamana (Chauhan) Rajput kingdom that controlled the Aravalli region from the 7th century CE and made it a sacred mountain. The Dilwara Temples were not built by Rajput rulers but by Vastupala and Tejapala — minister-brothers of the Solanki king of Gujarat who funded the Luna Vasahi as a private act of religious devotion in 1230 CE, working on a budget estimated (by medieval sources) at ₹18 crore of the era. The temples were never damaged by the Muslim invasions that destroyed most of the Hindu and Jain temples of medieval Rajasthan and Gujarat —…