Radha Damodar Temple

The Radha Damodar Temple lies at the foot of the Girnar hills near Junagadh in southern Gujarat, beside the sacred Damodar Kund, where pilgrims bathe and scatter the ashes of the dead in the hope of moksha. Its black-stone image of Damodar, a four-armed form of Krishna, stands with Radha at his side, and Vaishnavas regard Damodar as the presiding lord of the whole Girnar pilgrimage.

Tradition credits the first installation of the idols to Vajranabha, Krishna's grandson, and a Suryavanshi ruler named Chandraketpur is said to have built the early shrine; it was renovated in 462 under the Gupta emperor Skandagupta.

The present pink-sandstone complex, with its inner sanctum and two spires, also houses sub-shrines. In the fifteenth century the Gujarati poet-saint Narsinh Mehta came to bathe in the tank and composed his morning hymns on its banks.