Dwarkadhish

Dwarka is one of the rare shrines to hold three of Hinduism's great designations at once: it is the western abode of the Char Dham that Adi Shankaracharya wove into a single all-India pilgrimage (with Badrinath, Puri and Rameswaram), one of the Sapta Puri or seven cities said to grant liberation, and a Divya Desam sung by the Tamil Alvar saints.

Here Krishna is worshipped not as the cowherd of Vrindavan but as Dwarkadhish, the 'King of Dwarka' — the sovereign and statesman of the Mahabharata. Atop the spire flies an enormous flag bearing the sun and the moon, changed by hand several times each day; to sponsor and process a new flag is itself an act of devotion for which pilgrims wait years. To stand before Dwarkadhish, at the meeting of river and sea on the country's western rim, is for many the fulfilment of a lifelong vow.

Dwarka stands at the western edge of the Saurashtra peninsula, where the Gomti creek meets the Arabian Sea, and takes its fame from Krishna: tradition holds that, leaving Mathura, he raised his golden capital here, reclaiming the very land from the ocean. The temple — known as the Jagat Mandir, the 'Temple of the World' — is believed to rise over the site of Krishna's own residence, the Hari-griha.

Legend credits the first shrine to Vajranabha, Krishna's great-grandson, and the place has been revered for well over two thousand years; marine archaeology off the coast has indeed brought up jetties, stone anchors and the traces of an ancient submerged port. The present five-storey temple, however, largely dates to the 15th–16th century, rebuilt and enlarged after earlier structures were lost, over a sanctified core of far greater age.

Dwarka's spiritual standing was sealed by Adi Shankaracharya, who founded here the Sharada Peeth, the western of his four cardinal monasteries. The bhakti poet-saint Mira Bai is remembered in legend as having merged into the image of Krishna at this very shrine — one of many stories that bind the town to the deepest currents of Vaishnava devotion.

Built in the Māru-Gurjara (Chalukya) style, the Jagat Mandir rises in five storeys of intricately carved limestone and sandstone, its tall shikhara borne — by tradition — on seventy-two pillars and climbing, by the most-cited measure, to around 78 metres (256 feet). From its summit streams the great Dhwaja, a flag of some fifty-two yards of cloth marked with the sun and moon, replaced several times a day by a priest who scales the tower.

The temple has two principal gateways: the Swarga Dwara, the 'Gate to Heaven', through which pilgrims enter and descend fifty-six steps to the Gomti ghats to bathe, and the Moksha Dwara, the 'Gate to Liberation', opening toward the town. Nearby, the Sudama Setu footbridge crosses the Gomti creek toward the sea. Every surface — pillars, brackets and spire — carries the dense figural carving characteristic of western Indian temple building.