Histories of Śatruñjaya and the Making of Jain Identity in South Asia

Abstract Śatruñjaya is a pilgrimage center renowned for its historic Jain temples built throughout the second millennium, near Pālitāṇā town in Gujarat in India, whose multiple histories unveil the resilience of the early medieval and early modern Jain community. The narratives associated with this sacred site present it as a spiritual landscape associated with the nirvana (liberation) of Jain tīrthaṅkars . However, the history of the site remains closely knitted with occasions of sectarian conflict, moments of contestation, and events of political invasions. Although the change of political regimes in northwestern India led to certain restrictive norms, in their everyday lives, members of the Jain community, through their networks both inside and outside the community, continued to ensure survival of Śatruñjaya as a sacred space. The Jain narratives available in Sanskrit and vernacular texts sought to map the details of pilgrimages undertaken to sacred sites in Śatruñjaya and to praise the individuals who made such efforts. However, such attempts to construct a direct religious genealogy linking the Jainism of antiquity, the site of Śatruñjaya, and the Jain community at times went on to construct their “other” as well. Here, I examine the practices of destruction, claims of renovation, and the patterns of patronage with the premise that there has been a well-established conception of the relationship between community identity formations, sacred landscapes, and political exigencies.