Travel

 Girnar is an ancient hill in Junagadh, Gujarat, India. It is one of the holiest pilgrimages of Jains, a Mahatirth, where the 22nd Tirthaṅkar, Lord Neminath attained omniscience, and later nirvana at its highest peak Neminath Shikhar, along with other five hundred and thirty three enlightened sages. This is well described in ancient texts such as Kalpa Sūtra written by acharya Bhadrabāhu and Shri Uttaradhyayana Sutra by Arya Sudharmaswami. It is administered by the Junagadh Municipal Corporation.

Geology

Mount Girnar is a major igneous plutonic complex which intruded into the basalts towards the close of the Deccan Trap period. The rock types identified in this complex are gabbros tholeiitic and alkalic, diorites, lamprophyres, alkali-syenites and rhyolites. The parent gabbroic magma is shown to have given rise in sequence to diorites, lamprophyres and alkali-syenites. The rhyolite, though previously considered as a product of differentiation, is now believed to be an independent magma without any genetic link with the gabbro and its variants.

History

Map of Girnar Mountain Range

Girnar was an important mountain that has been a sacred place for Jains since centuries.

In the 7th century, the Chinese traveler Hsuan-tsang mentioned Girnar as a place of "supernatural monks". On the southern side of the mountain, there are Jain temples that were built in the 13th century.

Ashoka edicts

Fourteen of Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts, dating to circa 250 BCE, are inscribed on a large boulder that is housed in a small building located outside the town of Junagadh on Saurashtra peninsula in the state of Gujarat, India. It is located on Girnar Taleti road, at about 2 km 1.2 mi far from Uperkot Fort easterly, some 2 km before Girnar Taleti. An uneven rock, with a circumference of seven meters and a height of ten meters, bears inscriptions etched with an iron pen in Brahmi script in a language similar to Pali and date back to 250 BCE, thus marking the beginning of written history of Junagadh.

On the same rock there are inscriptions in Sanskrit added around 150 CE by Mahakshatrap Rudradaman I, the Saka Scythian ruler of Malwa, a member of the Western Satraps dynasty see Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman. The edict also narrates the story of Sudarshan Lake which was built or renovated by Rudradaman I, and the heavy rain and storm due to which it had broken.