The Historian - SAM DALRYMPLE

For our annual art issue, we visit a Jain temple in Multan, which features a mix of Mughal and Sikh styles and some of the finest miniature paintings in all of Punjab.

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Jainism is one of the oldest religions in the world, and since at least 300 BC, it has had a small but important presence in what is now Pakistan. The floor plan of an ancient Jain temple survives in Sirkap, Taxila, on the outskirts of Islamabad, and records in Gujarat's Shatrunjaya, regarded as one of Jainism's holiest sites, show donations from one Jadav Shah of Taxila. Later, the 7th-century Chinese traveller Xuanzang recorded meeting Jain monks from both the Digambara and Svetambara sects in his travels across the region.

Most of Pakistan's surviving Jain temples are clustered around the Nagarparkar region of Sindh, in southern Pakistan. But a few of them also survive in Punjab, including one in Multan. Set in a corner of the Churi Sarai bazaar, the Parshvanath Jain Shwetambar temple was built in the early 1800s and its walls feature some of the finest miniature paintings in Punjab.