The Luna Vasahi Marble Temple at Dilwara on Mount Abu Was Consecrated on Sunday, 3 March 1230, and Its 32 Inscriptions Name the Builder Tejahpala, 52 Shrines for the Jinas and the Rules for Its Festival

The Luna Vasahi stands at Dilwara on Mount Abu in Rajasthan. A vasahi is a Jain temple, and this one is dedicated to Neminatha, the 22nd Tirthankara, a Jain teacher who has crossed over to liberation. Two long Sanskrit records cut into slabs in its corridor tell who built it and when. The second of them gives the date as Sunday, the third day of the dark half of Phalguna, in Vikrama year 1287, and the epigraphist Kielhorn calculated that as Sunday, 3 March 1230. H. Wilson published a translation of the first record in 1828 and A. V. Kathavate printed its text in 1883. H. Lüders then edited both in Epigraphia Indica, volume 8 (1905 to 1906), and his edition is the one this piece follows.

The builder was Tejahpala, a minister of the Vaghela chief Viradhavala, who ruled under the Chaulukya king Bhimadeva at Anahilapataka (modern Patan, the Solanki capital described in the Rani ki Vav piece). Lüders says the common label “the temple of Vastupala and Tejahpala” is wrong, because the inscriptions credit the foundation to Tejahpala alone.

Thirty-two inscriptions from one temple

Henry Cousens of the Archaeological Survey of the Bombay Presidency took inked impressions of the Mount Abu inscriptions in 1902. They reached Lüders through Hultzsch and Kielhorn, and he edited 32 from the Neminatha temple. The first is cut on a black slab set in a niche of the corridor. It is a Sanskrit poem, almost entirely in verse, composed by Someshvara, the priest of the Chaulukya kings and author of a longer poem, the Kirtikaumudi. Such a verse eulogy is called a prashasti. The engraver was Chandeshvara, son of Dhandhala, and the closing prose of the first record says the temple was consecrated by the Jain priest Vijayasenasuri on that Sunday in Phalguna of Vikrama 1287.

The second record is on a white slab in another niche. Lüders calls it the official record of the erection of the temple and of the rules for its festivals, protection and upkeep. It repeats the date, and it says the work was done at the village of Deulavada on the summit of Arbuda, the old name of Mount Abu. Lüders identifies Deulavada with Dilwara on the Indian Atlas.

What the poem says was built

Verses 59 to 64 are the description. Tejahpala built the temple of Neminatha on Arbuda for the religious merit of his wife Anupama and his son Lavanyasimha, also written Lunasimha. The record gives the temple its original name, Lunasimhavasahika, or in shorter form Lunavasahika, after the son. The building was of white marble, with a lofty mandapa (pillared hall) at the front, 52 shrines for the Jinas along its sides and a stone seat in front. The verse adds ten statues on female elephants, of members of the family, named as Chandapa, Chandaprasada, Soma, Asvaraja, Luniga, Malladeva, Vastupala, Tejahpala, Jaitrasimha and Lavanyasimha. Images of the same ten with their wives were set behind them on white marble seats. Record II adds an elephant hall, a hastisala.

James Fergusson, writing on Indian architecture, measured the temple at about 155 by 92 feet overall on a plan by Cousens. He noted that no good marble quarry was known within 20 or 30 miles, so every block had to be hauled up the hill, and he called the domes of the two marble temples at Dilwara probably unsurpassed anywhere in their delicacy of detail. Round each dome, he says, sixteen four-armed figures of the Vidyadevis, goddesses of knowledge, stand on brackets. He saw the elephants too, five on each side of a carved four-faced shrine, with their riders carried off or destroyed.

The family behind it

Record I traces Tejahpala’s family to Anahilapura, the Chaulukya capital, and names his ancestors Chandapa, Chandaprasada and Soma, then his father Asvaraja and mother Kumaradevi. They professed the Jain faith and belonged to the Pragvata lineage. They had eleven children: four sons, Luniga, Malladeva, Vastupala and Tejahpala, and seven daughters. Luniga died young. Vastupala is described as serving the Chaulukyas, and Lüders adds that he earned the title sanghapati, leader of a pilgrim company, by organising a great pilgrimage to the holy hills of Shatrunjaya, Raivataka (Girnar) and Prabhasa, a fact he takes from the Kirtikaumudi. The poem also carries a long digression on the Paramara rulers of Chandravati, the local chiefs under whom Mount Abu lay, and it gives the Paramara descent from the sacrificial fire of the sage Vasishtha, a tale told in Who were the Rajputs.

Rules cut into the wall

Record II is as much a charter as a date stone. It names the trustees: the brothers Malladeva, Vastupala and Tejahpala and their descendants, together with the male members of the family of Tejahpala’s wife Anupama. It lays out an eight-day festival, to begin on the third day of the dark half of Chaitra, on the anniversaries of the consecration, with bathing and worship done by lay Jains of the Chandravati country, each day assigned to a named local community. Lüders counts about half of the named laymen as Pragvatas, with the rest Osavalas, Shrimalis and Dharkatas. A further clause makes the lay Jains of Deulavada responsible for the five kalyanakas, the yearly feasts on the anniversaries of Neminatha’s conception, birth, initiation, enlightenment and final liberation.

The record also lists those who took on the care of the temple: the Paramara king Somasimha, his son Kanhadadeva and other princes, the Chandravati trustees, ascetics, Brahmans and residents of twelve villages on and around the mountain. Lüders reads their promise as binding them and their descendants for as long as the sun and moon last. A last line of the original text records that Somasimha gave a village by edict for the god’s worship. The reigning Chaulukya king in the record is Bhimadeva, whom Lüders identifies as Bhimadeva II.

Later shrines and later damage

Tejahpala kept adding. The shorter records, Nos. IV to XXXII, are cut on lintels over the cell shrines of the corridor and record shrines or images set up for the merit of family members. Lüders dates Nos. IV to XVIII to Vikrama 1288, Nos. XIX to XXIII to Vikrama 1290, and a further group to Vikrama 1293, which Kielhorn worked out as Friday, 20 February 1237. The last, No. XXXII, is dated Thursday, 11 April 1241. Fergusson counted 46 inscriptions over the cell doors, dated between 1230 and 1236, a count and range that differ from Lüders’s 32 and his later dates.

K. F. Sompura, in The Structural Temples of Gujarat, writes that the main sanctum was almost completely destroyed and the adjoining hall damaged about 1311 by an invading army, and that a merchant named Pethada repaired the shrine in 1321 and installed a newly made image of Neminatha. He takes both from Muni Jayantavijaya’s guide Holy Abu, which this piece did not open. The last two lines of Record II, cut in a coarser hand, are a later addition: two Sanskrit verses in praise of Mount Abu by Nayachandrasuri and a short note in the local language that a pilgrim came to worship there.

Where the sources differ

The date comes with a wrinkle. The record on the main doorway’s lintel, No. III, gives a different day: Monday, the third of the bright half of Phalguna in Vikrama 1287. Kielhorn calculated for Lüders that this does not fit the year however it is counted, and would fall on Friday, 7 February 1231 or Sunday, 17 February 1230. Lüders prefers the date in Records I and II. Fergusson and Sompura both give 1230 for the consecration, though Sompura writes 1231 in another passage.

On the reason for building, Fergusson wrote that the inscriptions ascribe the temple to Tejahpala alone, in memory of his brother, and that it is therefore also known as Luniga’s Vasati. Lüders, reading the same records, has the temple built for the merit of Tejahpala’s wife and son and named after the son. Luniga appears as the fifth of the ten elephant statues. Tod’s 1839 Travels in Western India described the “rival temple” as one of Parshvanath, built by Tej Pal and Bussunt Pal. The inscriptions say Neminatha, and the Ministry of Tourism’s page names the temple the same way.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre page for India, checked on 6 November 2026, shows 45 inscribed properties and 81 Tentative List entries, and neither list names the Dilwara temples or Mount Abu.

Visiting Dilwara

The Ministry of Tourism lists five temples at Dilwara, built between the 11th and 16th centuries: Vimal Vasahi and Pittalhar to Adinath, Luna Vasahi to Neminath, and temples of Parshvanath and Mahavir Swami. Fergusson puts the older of the two marble temples, Vimal Vasahi, at 1031, and tuput’s Modhera Sun Temple piece cites Burgess for 1032, so “about 1030” is the safe wording.

The Ministry’s Dilwara page, checked on 6 November 2026, says tourists may enter from 12 noon to 5 or 6 pm, and Jain worshippers from 6 am to noon. Entry is free. Cameras, mobile phones and leather items are strictly prohibited, and clothing must cover shoulders and knees. Its infobox gives opening at 6 am and closing at 6 pm.

For getting there, the same ministry’s pages name Abu Road station, about 28 km from Mount Abu on the Delhi to Mumbai line, and Udaipur’s Maharana Pratap Airport, roughly 176 km away.