Sri Digambar Jain Lal Mandir

About

Sri Digambar Jain Lal Mandir stands at the heart of Old Delhi, facing the Red Fort across the historic thoroughfare of Chandni Chowk. Built of red sandstone whose hue gives the Temple its name, the sanctuary is the oldest Jain shrine in the Indian capital and a long-standing focus of Digambar devotion in the city.

The foundation of the Temple is dated by the Jain scholar Balbhadra Jain to 1656, during the reign of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, the builder of Shahjahanabad. Tradition relates that a Jain officer in the Mughal army kept a Tirthankara image within his tent for personal worship, and as fellow Jain officers gathered around the small shrine, a permanent Temple gradually took shape upon the site within Shah Jahan's invited Agrawal Jain settlement south of Chandni Chowk.

In its early life the Temple was known by other names that recall its origins in the imperial camp: the Urdu Mandir, after the Urdu Bazaar quarter, and the Lashkari Mandir, from lashkar, the word for an army encampment. The present buildings were raised after the close of the Mughal era, with the principal reconstruction completed in 1878.

A distinctive feature of the precinct is the Jain Birds Hospital located in a building behind the main shrine, where wounded and ill birds are nursed and released. This compassion for all sentient creatures, central to Jain ahimsa, draws visitors from across India and beyond, and lends the Temple a living expression of the principles its rituals proclaim.

History

The Temple's origins trace to 1656, during the reign of Shah Jahan, when a Jain officer in the Mughal army is said to have kept a Tirthankara image in his tent for personal worship within the army encampment south of Chandni Chowk. Fellow Jain officers gathered around the small shrine until a permanent Temple took shape on the site, known in its early years as the Urdu Mandir and the Lashkari Mandir, the camp Temple. The present buildings date largely from a reconstruction of 1878, and the community still recalls how Aurangzeb, after banning musical instruments at the Temple, lifted the ban himself upon witnessing that its drums could not be silenced.

Significance

The Temple's main shrine holds a dark image of Lord Parshvanath, with further shrines to Lord Mahavira and Lord Rishabhanatha within the same hall, drawing Digambara Jains for daily darshan and for the observance of Paryushan and Das Lakshana Parva. Behind the main shrine, the Jain Birds Hospital nurses the sick and injured birds of Old Delhi, carrying the principle of ahimsa into daily practice at the threshold of one of India's oldest streets.

Architecture

Mughal-era Jain Temple architecture in red sandstone, three shikhara-topped spires over a first-floor sanctum reached across a colonnaded courtyard