जै · The Jain Encyclopedia
Section · 15 parts of the island

Nandīśvara

नन्दीश्वर

The eighth continent out, carrying fifty-two temples that nobody built — and no human has ever been there.

Every ring of the middle world is twice the width of the one before, and thirteen doublings out from the salt sea lies Nandīśvara: a band wider than the entire radius of the world it encircles, and a garden with nothing in it but mountains and shrines. Four black peaks, sixteen white cylinders, thirty-two flat discs of jewel, and on every one of the fifty-two an eternal temple holding a hundred and eight images. The gods come three times a year for eight days. Jains on earth keep the same eight days, and build the fifty-two as temples of their own. Follows the Śvetāmbara reckoning throughout.

All of it is also walkable as an interactive atlas of nested maps.

Nandīśvara-dvīpa 4

One Añjana complex 6

The mountains, and the eternal temple 5

समयं गोयम! मा पमायए

Do not be heedless, Gautama, for even a single samaya.

Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 10