The derasar is the Jain temple in the usage of Gujarat and Rajasthan, and it is the characteristic place of worship of the image-venerating Svetambara community of western India.
Worship before the image
A derasar houses consecrated images of the Tirthankaras, and the daily worship performed there, the puja, includes the bathing, anointing and honouring of the image with offerings of rice, flowers and lamps. The Svetambara image is depicted with inlaid eyes and often adorned, a point on which the tradition differs visibly from the Digambara. The temples of the region are famous for their marble carving, the great temple-cities of Mount Abu and Palitana being the supreme examples, where hundreds of shrines cover a sacred hill.
An image tradition among Jains
The derasar belongs to one side of an old division within Jainism over the place of images. The Svetambara Murtipujaka tradition, whose temple it is, holds image worship central, against the Sthanakvasi and Terapanthi reform traditions that reject it, so the existence and the furnishing of the derasar are themselves a position in an internal Jain argument. The temple is maintained by the lay community, whose gifts endow it, and the great pilgrimage temples draw Jains from across India and the diaspora to a form of worship that the aniconic Jain reformers deliberately set aside.