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Jain Digest
A journey to Ranakpur
TI
By Thomas J. Lynn, Joplin Missouri
out next to all the remarkable events and sights we had Photo of the Adinath Temple at Ranakpur by Sally already encountered. In fact, in Udaipur, from which Scholl
city we made the trip to Ranakpur, the very hotel we One of the most difficult challenges for some were staying at, the Lake Palace (formally a palace of one who has undergone an extraordinary experience is Udaipur rulers), is so splendid that I would have been to try to find the words to convey even mere vestiges of content with our visit to that part of the country if it that experience to others. I recently faced this challenge alone had been the highlight. in the rather prosaic context of writing holiday greet
The magic of the day we traveled through ings to friends and family. How could I tell them about southern Rajasthan to Ranakpur arose from the jourthe six weeks I spent in India last summer and even ney itself as well as the destination. Our bus wound begin to scratch the surface of why they were so through flat and moderately hilly agricultural land, momentous to me? After all, even the more than 123 then increasingly rocky and steep landscapes, around pages of elaborate journal I kept seem lacking when I narrow roads perched atop alarmingly sheer cliffs consider all that I left out or
before we arrived at the inadequately described. So
temple complex, nestled in my correspondence (and
in a remote valley amidst personal conversations as
the Aravalli Hills. There well) I have shied away
was much to attract our from discussing my Indian
attention on the journey: sojourn at length, desiring
the children and even not to render it insignifi
adults who gaily waved cant with inadequate
at us as we passed, our words. I have resorted to a
Hindu driver handing few pet phrases that include
incense through the winadjectives such as "incred
dow to a Muslim man ible" and "wondrous," con
tending a small mosque tent that a friend or family
(urging him to burn it member at least under
soon), men and women stands that something spe
cultivating the soil, nocial happened.
madic people with their One thing about "extraordinary" or "won-, camels who stepped out to briefly meet us, grazing drous" experiences is that they often creep up on us animals granting safe passage to the birds on their unexpectedly. Perhaps part of the reason some of the backs, exotic-looking birds in bright hues of red and most memorable events in our lives acquire such reso- green darting by with little dips and leaps, like those of nance is that we didn't expect them, and the contrast the undulating landscape below them. Looking back, between what we expected and what actually hap it seems appropriate that I was more conscious of the pened deepens the impression on us. One such occa- beauty of nature and the human interaction with it on sion for me in India came on the day my group (partici- that journey than perhaps any other in India, since pants in a summer seminar) traveled by bus to the what lends radiance to the Adinath Templeat Ranakpur, complex of Jain temples at Ranakpur. Why was our primary destination, beyond its dazzlingly carved Ranakpur such a surprise? Partly because I was not marble, is its union with the surrounding countryside. familiar with its reputation or that of Jain architecture
I did not, however, fully perceive this union in general. If I had merely looked in Encyclopaedia until I was high up in the temple. What I did recognize Britannica, I would have read that "the richness and when we first arrived and had not yet entered was that quality of Jain) architecture and carving in stone have the Ranakpur complex was conceived as a spiritual few equals." Not that the prospect of this excursion retreat far removed from the agitations of dense human held no attraction for me: I was intrigued because it was populations: remote today, how much more remote it connected to the Jain religion, which, through my inter- must have been when built in the fifteenth century! We est in animal welfare and non-violence, I had devel- immediately noticed that, unlike most of the other oped a dim awareness of and interest in. But aside from venerable sites we visited, there were no vendors presthat I didn't anticipate how this journey would stand lent, and, appropriately, the first individuals we en
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