(Audrey) I arrived yesterday morning in Patan, a small town/city (around 100,000 population) in northern Gujarat. Patan is off the beaten path, you might say. There’s little to see here, except the reason I tend to go to places—a fabulous library. In this case the library is a Jain Bhandar, meaning that it’s attached to a temple and run by Jains, members of one of India’s homegrown religions that goes back 2,500 years. I’ll write about the bhandar later, but in a spare moment yesterday afternoon, I wandered over to the attached Jain temple. It’s quite ornate, as you can see above.
There are many murtis or idols inside, largely of the different Jinas or enlightened Jain teachers. They get special treatment because they’ve achieved what seekers in Jainism all want—some sort of enlightenment and understanding about the world while being free of worldly things. Most of the murtis look something like this—
A bit less ornate than your standard Hindu god, smooth, and made out of stone. Where things got interesting for me was when modern expectations appeared to seep into religious representations. Towards the entrance there were images of different local protectors and donors associated with the temple… many rocking the ever-present Indian mustache—
This guy’s even got the curling-up at the edges going on—
And finally, the founder of this entire town of Patan, himself a fan of the well-groomed mustache—
Tags: Gujarat, idol, jain, mandir, murti, mustache, Patan, temple
