Nakoda Parshwanath Jain Temple
Nakodaji · Shri Nakoda Parshwanath Jain Tirth · Nakoda Bhairav Temple
About
Nakoda is a village in the desert country of Rajasthan in north-western India, set within reach of Balotra and Jodhpur. The place takes its religious importance from Nakodaji, the Jain Temple at the village that has long drawn the Shvetambara community for darshan of Bhagwan Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara.
The shrine is among the most beloved pilgrimage centres of the Jain tradition in western India, set in a landscape where Jain devotion has shaped the rhythms of village life, trade, and Temple building for many centuries. Pilgrims come for the silent presence of the Jina, for the daily rites of worship, and for the merit said to flow from a visit to the Tirthankara at Nakoda.
Within the wider Jain sacred geography of Rajasthan, Nakoda takes its place alongside Mount Abu, Ranakpur, and the Dilwara cluster as a site of pilgrimage and quiet devotion, carrying forward the long memory of the Shramanic tradition in this corner of the subcontinent.
History
Tradition holds that a shrine first stood on this ground as early as the third century BCE, raised for an earlier tirthankara before the community's devotion turned to Lord Mahavira some centuries later. The Temple as pilgrims know it today takes its identity from 1372 CE, when a dark stone image of Lord Parshvanatha, said to have been hidden in a nearby pond during an earlier invasion, was recovered and installed in the sanctum. The shrine fell quiet for a time in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before the nun Sundarshriji led its restoration from 1903 onward, and the Temple's 246 surviving inscriptions trace centuries of renovation in between.
Significance
Pilgrims come to Nakodaji for the darshan of Lord Parshvanatha and for Lord Nakoda Bhairav, whose protection devotees of every background, Jain and Hindu alike, have sought for generations. The Temple's largest gathering falls each year on Paush Krishna Dashami, Lord Parshvanatha's birth anniversary in the Jain calendar, when a fair draws thousands of devotees from across India and abroad to this small desert village.
Architecture
Rajasthani Jain Temple architecture in Makrana marble, Jaisalmer sandstone, and Jodhpur stone, with numerous domical sub-shrines
Visiting
Daily worship
| Darshan | 06:00 to 22:00 |
Hours
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Through the four pathways
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Sandhāna सन्धान — Wisdom
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Festivals & Events
- Jan
Posh Dasham Mela (Parshvanatha Jayanti)
2 January 2027 · annual
Lord Parshvanatha's birth anniversary in the Jain calendar, the tirtha's largest gathering, when a fair draws thousands of pilgrims to this small desert village for darshan of both Lord Parshvanatha and Lord Nakoda Bhairav.
- Apr
Mahavir Jayanti
19 April 2027 · annual
The birth anniversary of Lord Mahavira, the twenty-fourth and final tirthankara, observed with processions and readings from Jain scripture.
Gallery
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