Visitors regularly walk past the Dilwara temples. The exteriors are unremarkable grey stone, and there is nothing on them to suggest what is inside.
The contrast
Inside is marble carving of a delicacy with no real parallel anywhere: ceilings cut into concentric rings of figures, lotus pendants dropping from the centres so thin that light passes through them, and surfaces worked until the stone reads as lace.
The contrast is deliberate and doctrinal, not an accident of unfinished work or later damage.
Display belongs inside, to the object of devotion. It does not belong on the street, where it would be an assertion of the patron's wealth to passers-by. A tradition organised around non-attachment does not advertise.
There is also a practical reading, and both are probably true: a plain exterior in a region that saw repeated iconoclastic raids is less likely to attract attention.
The two great temples
Vimal Vasahi, 1031, dedicated to Rishabhanatha, built for Vimal Shah, a minister of the Solanki king Bhima I.
Luna Vasahi, 1230, dedicated to Neminatha, built by the brothers Vastupala and Tejpala, ministers of the Vaghela rulers.
Three smaller temples followed between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The pattern
Every one of the five was paid for by a Jain serving as minister to a Hindu king.
That is how a small community without political power of its own produced buildings on this scale. Jains were disproportionately represented in finance and administration; ministers accumulated wealth; wealth went into temples; and the kings they served permitted it because the arrangement suited them.
It is the same structure as at Ranakpur, four hundred years later.
The story about the marble dust
It is said that the carvers were paid in gold matching the weight of the marble dust they removed, the finer the work, the greater the payment.
It is a good story, it is repeated by every guide on the mountain, and it is not history. No contemporary source supports it.
Practicalities
The temples are Svetambara, administered by a lay trust, Seth Shri Kalyanji Paramanandji Pedhi, which also runs a pilgrims' dining hall.
Open to visitors within restricted hours outside worship. Photography is prohibited inside, leather is not permitted, and the rules are enforced at the door.