Dwarkadhish Temple

The Dwarkadhish Temple stands at Dwarka, on the Saurashtra coast of Gujarat, and houses Krishna as Dwarkadhish, the Lord of Dwarka. Hindu tradition holds that Krishna built the city on land reclaimed from the ocean and made it his capital after leaving Mathura.

The five-storey shrine, also called the Jagat Mandir, is raised on 72 pillars and counted among the Char Dham and the Sapta Puri. Adi Shankara visited it in the eighth century and founded the nearby Dvaraka Pitha; archaeological evidence traces a temple here to around 200 BCE.

In 1473 the Gujarat sultan Mahmud Begada sacked Dwarka and destroyed the shrine and its idol. The present building was raised in the sixteenth century and the image installed in 1559. The poet-saint Mirabai is said to have vanished into the image, and Vallabha made Krishna Janmashtami a regular observance.