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CHAPTER 3
Kumbhāriyā: Denomination and Historical Background
Kumbhāriyā/Kumbhāriā, is situated about a mile and a half, or two and a quarter kilometres, to be precise slightly southeast of the famous holy tīrtha-town Ambājī of the Brahmanical goddess Ambā, District Banaskantha, in north Gujarat (see location map, Fig. 1). It is today a hamlet-like habitation, important only because of the existence of six medieval marble temples, five Jaina and one Sivaite, at the site. From about the turn of the century, the pilgrims had started revisiting the temples in progressively larger number just as the architectural splendours of the Jaina temples' interiors, for the past few decades, daily attract scores of tourists, thanks particularly to the improvements in roads and transport services as well as lodging and boarding facilities.
On the basis of later traditions, or maybe as an outcome of sheer speculations, suggestions have been made by contemporary writers for explaining how the site got the present appellation "Kumbhāriyā" or "Kumbhāriā”. It is, for example, said to be after the Guhila monarch Mahārāṇā Kumbhā (Kumbhakarna) of Mevād (Medapāta) (A.D. 1435-1470)' or after some rājaputa named Kumbhā who lived there; or the site was so called after the settlement there of the ‘kumbhāras' (Skt. kumbhakāras), members of the potter community. But the appellations for the settlement that overwhelmingly, indeed without an exception, figure in the medieval inscriptions are neither Kumbhāriyā nor Kumbhāriā: They invariably are Arāsaņa/Ārāsana and Ārāsaņākara/Ārāsanākara," the suffix "ākara' figuring in the second alternative appellation, in each instance, denotes quarry' (or 'metal mine') with reference arguably to the ancient marble quarries in the hills situated north-northeast of the settlement site. Even in an inscriptional reference of a date as late as A.D. 1619 (here Chapter 7, Insc. 145), it is called 'Arāsana-nagara', the denomination Kumbhāriyā clearly, then, is of a much later vogue, whatever its origin may have been. In any case, in the context of the temples, it has no relevance from the historical standpoint.
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