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Trip ideas  /  6 days of Diwali in Jaipur  /  Govind Dev Ji Temple
Govind Dev Ji Temple, Jaipur, Rajasthan
Historic site · Jaipur, Rajasthan

Govind Dev Ji Temple

A deity from Vrindavan.Nearly seven decades on the move.A hall with 119 feet of roof.

Photo: Sameergoyal ( talk ), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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The lamps

At Diwali the lamps reach temples, and this one is Krishna's

At Diwali, celebrants light their homes, temples and workspaces with diyas, candles and lanterns. This temple stands within the City Palace complex and is dedicated to Radha and Krishna. Seven aartis are performed through the day, and devotees come to receive darshan, the sight of the deity.

Three images

Tradition says the deity is one of three images of Krishna

According to legend, Bajranabh, the great-grandson of Krishna, created three images of Krishna: one for his feet, one for his chest and one for his face. The third image is the one known as Govind Dev Ji. The icon is counted among the seven principal Goswami deities of Vrindavan.

The long road

Carried out of Vrindavan, the icons took decades to reach Jaipur

In 1670 Vrindavan was sacked on the orders of Aurangzeb, and the icons were removed. An inscription dates their removal to August 1670, and they went first to Kaman. The relocation to Jaipur was not immediate. It unfolded over nearly seven decades of halts across Kachavaha territory.

The Sun Palace

The ruler declared the deity to be the true sovereign

When Govind Dev was installed at the Sun Palace in 1727, Sawai Jai Singh II declared the deity sovereign of the state and himself only the deity's chief minister. The Kachhwaha rulers kept to that rule until Rajasthan joined the Indian Union. At the coronation of a new Jaipur Maharaja, the king renders obeisance first to Govind Dev.

The hall

A pillarless hall holds a world record for its concrete roof

The temple's Satsang Hall holds the Guinness World Record for being the world's widest concrete building, recognised in 2009. Its flat roof crosses a single span of 119 feet with no pillars. The hall can accommodate 5,000 devotees at any given time.

119 feetSingle span of the Satsang Hall roof.

Day 4, morning

Next is Albert Hall Museum.

More stories from this trip idea

The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Govind Dev Ji Temple and the Wikipedia article Diwali, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.

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