A rare teak model of a Jain temple, India, 19th century

Collection of James (1935-2025) and Anita Terry, Bloomfield Hills, MI. 

Exquisitely carved from blocks of solid teak, this model of a temple captures the ornate grandeur of a typical northern or western Indian Jain temple. Its design, constructed with five separate pieces, allows the viewer to inspect the interior spaces, which are as intricately carved as its lavish exterior. With a masterful level of minute detail, this likely would have been an expensive and important commission, the exact purpose of which is at this time unknown.

With its towering main spire (shikhara), diamond-form central hall (mandapa) and its encircling porches (ardha mandapa), the form of the present model closely aligns with the traditional temple architecture of northern and western India, and can be closely compared to Jain temples in Rajasthan and Gujarat, including the famous Dilwara Temples at Mount Abu and Ranakpur Temple. The main shrine (garbhagriha) contains a seated figure with four heads facing in the four directions. While rare, images of four-faced jinas are known, and indeed the main image at Ranakpur is a four-faced image of the first tirthankara, Rishabhanatha. Additional images of seated jinas are found in niches carved in the interior mandapa and on the exterior walls, alongside countless standing jina figures. 

There is historical precedent in Indian culture for the production of temple models: small, portable reproductions carried out in stone and wood of the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment, were produced for pilgrims as early as the eleventh century. See, for example, an eleventh-century stone model preserved in the Potala Palace Collection, illustrated by Ulrich von Schroeder in Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, vol. I, Hong Kong, 2003,, pl. 111A, as well as a later, fifteenth-century wood model in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (accession no. IS.50-1995), illustrated on the Museum’s website.

Also preserved within the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum is perhaps a more related example of a temple model (accession no. IS.3-1999); carved in teak like the present example, the V&A example depicts the Miyan Khan Chishti's mosque in Ahmedabad, a fifteenth-century building that had undergone renovations in 1874. The model, however, does not display any of the late nineteenth-century renovations, perhaps indicating it was made prior to 1874. The V&A example is intricately and precisely carved like the present example, and shares the same deep patina. It is possible the present example and the V&A example were produced by the same workshop. Another, more fanciful and imaginative teak ‘temple model’ in the Museum’s collection (accession no. IM.321-1924, illustrated on the Museum’s website), depicting a conspicuously Hindu temple resplendent with images of the various forms of Vishnu, was presented to King George V and Queen Mary in 1923 by the Maharaja of Mysore and included in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924, although the latter example is more a pastiche of temple-architecture motifs assembled into a casket-like box.