Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

A Long Climb, Several Destinations

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
A Long Climb, Several Destinations

Girnar's pilgrimage path runs to nearly ten thousand steps, and different religions have claimed different points along the same climb.

A long climb, several destinations

Reaching Girnar's various shrines involves a stone stairway commonly cited at close to ten thousand steps, with clusters of Jain temples situated partway up the mountain and a Hindu shrine to Dattatreya, an ascetic deity, near the very summit, meaning pilgrims of different traditions may stop at different points along the identical physical path rather than sharing a single destination.

Neminatha's mountain

In Jain tradition, Girnar is specifically associated with Neminatha, the twenty-second Tirthankara, said to have achieved renunciation and eventually liberation in connection with this mountain, giving Girnar its own distinct place within Jain sacred geography alongside, but separate from, Shatrunjaya's association with Adinatha and Sammed Shikharji's association with the larger group of Tirthankaras.

As this entry's companion article covers

The specific dispute over authority and access at the mountain's summit, along with the Ashokan edict inscribed near its base, is addressed in this entry's companion article; this entry instead sets out the mountain's layered religious geography and the practicalities of the climb itself.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.