Raṇchoḍrāy of Dakor

Raṇchoḍrāy of Dakor

Overview

Raṇchoḍrāy is the presiding Krishna of the temple at Dakor, in Kheda district, Gujarat. He is worshipped in the Trivikrama form of Vishnu, and the name belongs to a regional convention rather than to a single image: in Gujarat and Rajasthan, Mallison notes, all Trivikrama images of Vishnu are known as Raṇchoḍ [S3]. She reads that convention as evidence of the growing dominance of the Kṛṣṇa-Gopāl cult in Gujarat over Viṣṇu-Trivikrama, and notes the same equation at the Dwarkādhīśa temple in Dwarka, at Śāmalājī and at Tulsīśyām [S3]. The shrine has regional significance within Gujarat; it takes influence from, but is not formally affiliated with, the Puṣṭimārga [S7].

The earlier version of this entry described Raṇchoḍrāy as "a regional goddess of Gujarat" and wrote of the image in the feminine. That is not supported. The image is a four-armed standing Vishnu [S3].

Identity & Iconography

The Dakor image is a Trivikrata, that is, standing and caturbhuja — four-armed [S3]. The four hands hold, in order from the upper left, the discus (cakra), the conch (śaṅkha), the lotus (padma) and the mace (gadā) [S3]. One detail is this image's own: a small golden flute has been placed in the lower right hand, so that Raṇchoḍ — a Trivikrama image of Viṣṇu — and Kṛṣṇa-Gopāl are identified [S3]. No material for the image is stated in any source consulted, and none is asserted here.

The Nija temple that holds the image also contains images of Lakṣmī, Satyabhāmā and Gopāla Lāl, and these three are taken to the Sajjā temple at night [S1]. The siṁhāsana, the throne, is of gold, donated by the Gāyakavāḍa (Gaekwad) dynasty [S4].

Sacred Narrative — the tradition's own story

Legend, as the temple and its texts tell it. According to the Ḍākor-māhātmya, a Rajput named Boḍāṇā, also called Vijayasiṁha, lived at Ḍākor and used to visit Dvārakādhīśa at Dwarka. In 1151, when Boḍāṇā was eighty years old, God told him he would come to Ḍākor with him [S3]. Boḍāṇā borrowed a cart and bullocks from a local cowherd and sold his utensils to feed them. When he reached Dwarka the Gugalīs, the temple priests, suspected him and put extra locks on the temple; but Dvārakānāth, now called Raṇchoḍ, slipped out, woke Boḍāṇā and told him to drive away with him. Past the city gates Raṇchoḍ himself drove while Boḍāṇā slept [S3]. The Gugalīs pursued them to Ḍākor, where Boḍāṇā had hidden the image in the Gomatī reservoir. A lance thrown by one of the Gugalīs landed on the image instead, and the water of the tank ran red [S3]. Boḍāṇā's wife Gaṅgā was asked to give the Gugalīs gold equal to the god's weight; the god told her the men were not missing him but the gold his presence brought them, and the image proved to weigh no more than her gold nose-ring, so the Gugalīs left [S3].

The temple's own version, longer and more particular. The trust's published history adds a previous-life frame — Boḍāṇā as Vijayanand, a cowherd at Gokul who failed to worship on a Holi and was given the boon of rebirth in Gujarat as Boḍāṇā — and a tulsi plant the devotee carried in an earthen pot on his palm on each of the six-monthly journeys to Dwarka, made over seventy-two years of them [S5]. It also gives the detail the earlier corpus had: the neem tree near Bileshwar Mahadev where the god rested, one branch of which turned sweet while the rest stayed bitter and which is the subject of a well-known Gujarati bhajan, and the replacement image later found in Sevaradhan Vav, the step well at Dwarka, which the impatient Gugalīs found earlier than they were told and which was smaller than the original [S5]. Pilgrims still visit the places the legend names [S5].

How old the legend is. The episode is not purely oral. The Mirāt-i-Aḥmedi of Muhammad Ali Khan, the last Mughal Diwan of Gujarat, compiled between 1750 and 1760, describes the removal of Raṇchoḍ from Dwarka to Ḍākor by Boḍāṇā, and Majmudar uses it to check the Ḍākor-māhātmya version [S1]. That is a mid-eighteenth-century attestation of an older tradition, not of the event.

A caution on the number. The Ḍākor-māhātmya's date is 1151 [S3]. A date of 1156 is in circulation and is attributed to the temple's own trust by a secondary encyclopaedia article, but the trust's own History page, as fetched on 2026-09-29, gives no year for the removal [S5][S8]. Both dates are reported here; neither is treated as settled.

Worship Practice

Worship at this shrine was reshaped in 1625, when Harirāy, a great-grandson of Viṭṭhalanātha, visited Dakor, reformed the sevā, and set Kheḍāvāl and Śrīgauḍ-Mevāḍ Brahmins to perform Vallabhite rites [S1][S3]. The Caurāsī Baiṭhaka makes Harirāy's part explicit: Raṇchoḍarāya appeared to him in a dream, said he was in a hut being served by Tapodhan Brahmins who bathed him, and ordered him to install the image in a proper temple [S3]. The Tapodhan Brahmin families were compensated by being allowed to keep half the income the image received [S3]. The Vallabhite rite itself is elaborate: Viṭṭhalanātha developed a sevā in which Kṛṣṇa images are given sumptuous meals, kīrtana, art and dress at eight fixed darśana times [S3]. Despite that, the trust has remained asectarian [S3].

What is offered. The trust's own account is the only one located that documents this shrine's material practice at any detail. Its gaushala keeps cattle, does not sell cows, gives bulls free to village panchayats for breeding, and uses the cows' milk for the deity's food offerings, turning the surplus into curd and butter and distributing it free among the inhabitants of the town and to padyatris on full-moon days [S5]. No offering-flower, colour or naivedya list for this shrine was located, and none is invented here.

Processions and fixed days. By tradition, when the temple was built Raṇchoḍ told Lakṣmī that the original temple should remain inhabited by her, and that he would visit her every Ekādaśī and every Friday in the form of Bāla-Kr̥ṣṇa; accordingly, on those days the icon of Gopāla Lāl is taken on elephant or carriage from the temple to Lakṣmījī's temple [S1]. On Phāgaṇ sud 11, Kuṁja Ekādaśī, a Kṛṣṇa image goes on horseback to Lakṣmī's temple, and on Āṣāḍh sud 2 there is the Ratha Yātrā Utsava with the Gomatī Pradakṣinā, the idol riding on an elephant [S4]. A month-long hiṁḍoḷā swinging runs from Āṣāḍh vad 11 to Śrāvaṇ vad 2–3, and the god swings on a glass hiṁḍoḷā on Ṭhakarāṇī Trīja, Śrāvaṇ sud 3 [S4].

Temple(s) / Seats

Dakor was a Śaiva centre before it was a Vaiṣṇava one. The oldest temple in the town is that of Śiva Ḍaṁkanātha, served by Tapodhan Brahmins, and the place was called Ḍākor after him; the area is also said to have been known as khakhariya for its palash trees [S9]. The Vaishnava complex grew around Raṇchoḍrāy: a temple built by a Bania named Nandana for Raṇchoḍjī, now known as Lakṣmījī's temple; an image moved there by a descendant of Boḍāṇā named Dīpasing; and a 1734 installation in a new temple by Ratan Singh, vajir of the raja of Mārwār [S1]. Majmudar argues that Ratan Singh was the true builder of the temple, and that the Ḍākor-māhātmya substitutes Nandana because its author disliked Abhai Singh, who had ordered the assassination of Pilaji Gaekwad at Dakor in 1732 [S1].

The present building is Gopāl Tāṁbvekar's, a Dakṣiṇī Brahmin from Poona and a devotee of Veṅkaṭeśa, with construction beginning in 1769–70 and the image moved in by Rāmasing, a descendant of Boḍāṇā, in 1770–71 [S1][S2]. The trust's own site states on its front page that the temple "was built in 1772 A.D." [S5]. The śikhara shows some Islamic influence, probably from hired Muslim craftsmen from Poona; the temple has four main śikharas capped in gold and seven domes, is surrounded by fort-like walls with two lamp-lit towers at the front, and its maṇḍapa stands twelve steps up so that the image's āratī is visible from the highest ghaṭ on the Gomatī lake [S4]. A close imitation was built at Sārasā near Anand some fifteen years later and is now the samādhi of Kuveradāsa [S4]. A Sanskrit inscription bearing the date of construction is reported to exist [S4].

Regional Forms

Raṇchoḍrāy is not a distinct goddess but a name for Viṣṇu-Trivikrama in the Gujarati and Rajasthani idiom, and it travels with the images: the same identification of Raṇchoḍ with Kṛṣṇa-Gopāl is reported at the Dwarkādhīśa temple at Dwarka, at Śāmalājī and at Tulsīśyām [S3]. What makes the Dakor image particular is the flute in the lower right hand, described as specific to this idol [S3]. The competing claim on the same image, made by the Puṣṭimārga and by the Ḍākor-māhātmya alike, is that it is the very image taken from Dvārakādhīśa at Dwarka; the Dwarka tradition counters that the image there was miraculously replaced [S3][S8].

Living Tradition

The temple is administered by a committee, not by the government: Vaishnava devotees, three nominees of the district court, one hereditary representative of the Tambwekar family and one from the sevaks, working under a manager, with trustee terms of ten years [S5]. The priests come from three Brahmin sub-castes — Tapodhan, Kheḍāval and Śrīgaud — and the trust states that about 232 priest families currently serve [S5]. The trust's financial base is the revenue of two villages, Dakor and Kanjari, granted in inam by the Peshwa Madhavrao and by Damaji Gaekwad's son Sayajirao and forming the Dakor Sansthan; the 1879 Sansthan Scheme was approved by the Privy Council in 1916 as the Dakor Temple Scheme, and the trust was registered as a public religious trust in 1952 [S5]. In the British period the Gaekwads of Baroda patronised the temple and its sevaks, the temple's ownership of the village of Dakor was confirmed, and the Vaishnava mahārājas Bhaṭṭajī and Maṭujī served Raṇchoḍarāy and patronised it in the 1860s and 1870 [S1].

Known Limitations

The date of the image's removal from Dwarka is given as 1151 by the Ḍākor-māhātmya and as 1156 in other accounts; both are reported above and neither is settled here. The date of the present temple is given as 1769–70 by Majmudar and as 1772 by the trust. The material of the image is unknown to this entry. The 84 km Ahmedabad foot-pilgrimage previously asserted for this shrine could not be traced to any source and has been removed; the Āṣāḍha procession documented here is the Gomatī Pradakṣinā. The daily rite timetable, the naivedya and offering-flower lists, and any attendance figure are not sourced and are in pending_facts. The two Shakta and goddess works formerly cited in this entry, Sircar 1973 and Kinsley 1987, were removed rather than retained unconsulted, and neither concerns this deity. Majmudar, Mallison and Majamudāra are cited at the page numbers reported in the reference list of the finding-aid article; none of the three was consulted in its own right, and a reviewer should confirm the page references before publication. No ASI protected-monument record for this temple was located.

Sources

1. [S1] M. R. Majmudar, "Dwārkā Image of Raṇchhoḍjī and the temple at Ḍākore", Journal of the University of Bombay 16, 1947, pp. 57–91. Tier 1. Cited at the pages reported in [S7]; not consulted directly.
2. [S2] M. R. Majmudar, Cultural History of Gujarat (From Early Times to Pre-British Period), Popular Prakashan, 1960, p. 203. Tier 1. Not consulted directly.
3. [S3] Françoise Mallison, "Development of early Krishnaism in Gujarāt: Viṣṇu – Raṇchoḍ – Kṛṣṇa", in Monika Thiel-Horstmann (ed.), Bhakti in Current Research 1979–1982, Collectanea Instituti Anthropos 30, Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin, 1983, pp. 247–248. Tier 1. Not consulted directly.
4. [S4] Maṁjulāla Ra. Majamudāra, Vaiṣṇavatīrtha Ḍākora (Gujarati), Prācyavidyā Mandira, Mahārāja Sayājīrāva Viśvavidyālaya, Vaḍodarā, 1984 (Śrī Sayājī Sāhityamāḷā, puṣpa 362), pp. 5–9, 31–45. Tier 1. Not consulted directly.
5. [S5] Shri Ranchhodraiji Maharaj Mandir, Dakor, "History", https://ranchhodraiji.org/history/ (accessed 2026-09-29). Tier 1 — issuer's own page, read in full.
6. [S6] Ḍākor-māhātmya and Caurāsī Baiṭhaka. Tier 2 — primary Gujarati narratives, quoted but not consulted; the versions used are those reported by [S1] and [S3].
7. [S7] "Ranchhodraiji Temple", Wikipedia, revision 1377067824, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ranchhodraiji_Temple&oldid=1377067824. Tier 2 — finding aid only (SOURCES_POLICY rule 5), used solely to reach [S1]–[S4].
8. [S8] "Dwarkadhish Temple", Wikipedia, revision 1375996660, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dwarkadhish_Temple&oldid=1375996660. Tier 2 — finding aid only; source in that article of the competing 1156 date and of the Dwarka tradition that the image there was miraculously replaced.
9. [S9] "Dakor", Wikipedia, revision 1375932171, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dakor&oldid=1375932171. Tier 2 — finding aid only; also the source of the 2001 Census figures for the town, which are not used here.