Deulghata Jain Temple, West Bengal

Address

Deulghata Jain Temple, Baram, Purulia Bankura districts West Bengal 723201

Diety

Tirthankara

Introduction

Purulia is in the Chotanagpur plateau, which stretches across parts of present-day South Bihar, Jharkhand and the Purulia and Bankura districts of West Bengal. In olden times, this area was known as Rarh Pradesh. when Purulia was a thriving centre of Jainism in Bengal. The 24th and last Jain Tirthankara, Vardhamana Mahavira, is believed to have spent considerable time here. Today, soaring, overgrown ruins are all that is left of this Jain heritage, and chief among those ruins are the temples of Deulghata. Behind it, you will see a similar structure and, partially hidden among the trees, more and more, until it hits you that you are among the ancient brick temples of Deulghata.

Puranic Significance

The Acharang Sutra, a Jain text from the 3rd or 2nd century BCE – the oldest text in the Jain canon –mentions that Mahavira visited Rarh Pradesh, and was treated with hostility by local residents. Another important canonical Jain text, the Bhagavati Sutra, mentions that Mahavira spent a considerable amount of time at Panit Bhumi in Rarh Pradesh, as Purulia was then known. Around 1078 CE, the region came under the rule of King Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva, ruler of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty of Odisha. This was Jainism’s Golden Age. Though a Shaivite himself, King Anantavarman was a great patron of Jainism and built a number of Jain temples around his second capital of Ambikanagar, in Bankura, about 120 km from Deulghata. Today, only two brick temples remain at Deulghata. The third collapsed in 2002. The first temple on the southern side was mentioned by Dalton as being the largest. He described the inner sanctum as being just about 9 sq ft in area. The chamber is pyramidal in shape, with a triangular entrance and a small interior, given the size of the exterior. Dalton noted that “the tower rises from a base of 26 feet square” and estimated on that basis that it was originally 60 ft tall. “…but the upper portion of it has fallen, and it is impossible to say how it was finished off,” Dalton said.