Naya Mandir - Accounts of Nineteenth Century Visitors

Accounts of Nineteenth Century Visitors

After the 1857 Ghadar and during early 20th century, this was the temple referred to as the Jain temple of Delhi by several European visitors.

E. Augusta King in 1884 describes the temple as:

The frontage: The Jain temple has a fine frontage of carved stone, carved so profusely in such delicate airy tracery that it is difficult to believe it is stone. We went up a flight of steps and came to a courtyard surrounded by what we call Moorish arches, with colonnades having groined roofs, every inch of which was painted elaborately with graceful arabesques, the effect being rich and soft in the extreme.

The decorations:On one side of the courtyard is the temple proper, on a raised dais four feet high. The building and decorations are exquisite; the shafts of all the arches are of polished white marble inlaid with flowing flowery patterns in coloured marbles. The walls and ceiling and every available inch are painted richly, the prevailing colours being blue and gold, but all so artistically blended that the eye only takes in the general effect, which is something like that of a Cashmere shawl.

The central shrine: In the centre, under the dome, is a very beautiful shrine for the idol, who is sitting serenely at a height of ten feet or so under a fine baldachino of white inlaid marble. If the whole could be transported to Italy, and a statue of the Virgin substituted for the idol, its beauty would be raved about. A sparrow was perched familiarly on the shrine, and gave us some little friendly chirps to show he did not object to our presence.

Some visitors describe the shrine as a "large wedding-cake".

James Fergusson, in his famous "History of Indian and Eastern Architecture" (1876) describes the temple as:

"There is one other example that certainly deserves notice before leaving this branch of the subject, not only on account of its beauty, but its singularity. .. It was left, however, for a Jaina architect of the end of the last or beginning of this century, in the Mahomodan city of Delhi, to suggest a mode by which what was only conventionally beautiful might really become an appropriate constructive part of lithic architecture. .. As will be observed in the last cut (No. 146), the architect has had the happy idea of filling in the whole of the back of the strut with pierced foliaged tracery of the most exquisite device.."