Lala Deen Dayal Reimagines the Art of Jain Pilgrimage at Dilawara

Pre-eminent Jain photographer Lala Deen Dayal’s archive at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi reveals a trove of Jain temple imagery from Dilawara in Mount Abu. Close readings of these nineteenth century photographs suggest that instead of illustrating British landscape aesthetics of the picturesque and the sublime, Dayal’s images serve as a conduit for Jain philosophies of vision and ritual visuality of darśan (divine seeing) moksha (salvation) and samavasarana (sacred discourse), reflecting a longer indigenous history of place. His image of the rangamandapa (central dome) in the Luna Vasahi Neminatha temple mediates a dialogue between the terrestrial and the divine, while his photographs of the temple’s sculpted friezes depicting the samavasarana provide discursive ways of seeing and experiencing place. His portrayal of the Neminatha temple interior structures space in such a way that the viewer gets positioned at the same level as the Jain tirthankara (idol) permitting a level darśan gaze. This image sets up a darśan experience that is different to existing North Indian Digambara Jain traditions in which one has to look up at the idol rather than directly at it. This paper argues that through these tactical visual articulations, Dayal is offering a subjective experience of pilgrimage which re-claims Dilawara as Jain sacred place for its rightful positioning within nineteenth century Orientalist histories of colonial India. By activating a phenomenological experience of place, these images propose an anticipated posterity for Jain pilgrimage.