The Adorned Image That Defines the Western Temple

The derasar's defining feature is not its architecture alone but the specific treatment of the images inside it, a doctrinal choice rather than a decorative one. Svetambara belief holds that the tirthankaras, though liberated souls, are properly shown retaining ordinary human features, so derasar images are given inlaid or painted eyes, dressed in cloth, and adorned with jewellery that is changed and cared for by attendants much as a living figure might be dressed, in sharp contrast to the unadorned images of the Digambara tradition across the peninsula. This approach to image worship reached its most elaborate architectural expression in western India over several centuries.

The Dilwara temples on Mount Abu, built in white marble between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries under Chaulukya era patronage, are still cited as the standard against which later Svetambara temple carving is measured, their ceilings carved so finely that the marble reads as lace rather than stone. The Ranakpur temple in Rajasthan, raised in the fifteenth century with over a thousand carved pillars said to be no two alike, extended the same tradition of lavish, image centred temple building that the derasar form was built to house.