Hastinapur Jain Tirth

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  WHAT IT IS: A great Jain tirth, traditionally honored as the birthplace of Bhagwan Shantinatha, Kunthunatha, and Arahnatha, and as the place where Bhagwan Rishabhadeva received the first alms after his long fast.
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  WHY VISIT OR CHANT: Pilgrims come to seek peace of mind, to remember the virtue of giving, and to honor three Tirthankaras who were also universal emperors and renounced all.
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  WHEN TO VISIT: October to March has the gentlest weather. Akshaya Tritiya, on Vaishakha Shukla Tritiya, and Mahavir Jayanti are especially auspicious.
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  WHERE: Hastinapur, Meerut District, Uttar Pradesh, about 37 kilometres from Meerut and 96 kilometres from Delhi, on the old course of the Ganga.
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  HOW:
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  Wear clean, simple clothes, and take darshan in the morning with quiet reverence.
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  Offer the eightfold puja of water, sandalwood, rice, flowers, sweets, lamp, incense, and fruit while reciting the Navkar Mantra.
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  On Akshaya Tritiya, devotees break fasts with sugarcane juice in remembrance of the first alms.
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  Keep a vegetarian diet, avoid root vegetables, and maintain silence inside the sanctum.

Jain tradition remembers Hastinapur as the city of King Shreyansa. After Bhagwan Rishabhadeva, the first Tirthankara, took the vows of a monk, he went without food for about 400 days, because people of that age did not yet know how to offer alms to a monk. Hemachandra's Trishashti Shalaka Purusha Charitra, Parva (book) 1, and the Adi Purana narrate his life.

When the Tirthankara approached Hastinapur, King Shreyansa, his great-grandson, recalled a previous birth in which he had offered food to a monk. Understanding the proper way to give, the king poured fresh sugarcane juice into the cupped hands of Rishabhadeva. Jains remember this day as Akshaya Tritiya, and it is why the festival is honored for the merit of giving that never diminishes.

Hastinapur is also revered as the birthplace of three Tirthankaras of the present descending age. These are the sixteenth, Bhagwan Shantinatha, the seventeenth, Bhagwan Kunthunatha, and the eighteenth, Bhagwan Arahnatha. Jain tradition holds that each was also a Chakravartin, or universal emperor, and a Kamadeva, a being of supreme beauty, before renouncing worldly life. Their stories are told in Parva 5 of the Trishashti Shalaka Purusha Charitra. Jain tradition also associates all four auspicious events of their lives, the Kalyanaks, with this sacred land.

The shrines below belong to the two major Jain traditions, Digambar (sky-clad) and Shwetambar (white-clad), which both honor Hastinapur as sacred ground.

Hastinapur has been honored by many generations of monks and householders. A stone relief showing 170 Jain Tirthankaras seated in meditation, dated to the second century CE, was excavated here and testifies to the long Jain devotion at this site.

The present Digambar Jain Bada Mandir is associated with Raja Harsukh Rai, a patron from Delhi who is remembered for supporting Jain temples in the early nineteenth century. In recent decades the Digambar nun Ganini Pramukh Aryika Gyanmati Mataji guided the building of Jambudweep, which brought wide attention to the tirth and its cosmological teaching.

The Navkar Mantra, honored in every Jain tradition, is a fitting prayer at this tirth, where three Tirthankaras are remembered. It salutes the Arihants, the Siddhas, the Acharyas, the Upadhyayas, and all monks of the world, without naming any individual.

I bow to the Arihants, to the Siddhas, to the Acharyas, to the Upadhyayas, and to all the monks in the world. May the peace of Bhagwan Shantinatha rest upon all living beings.