Patronage in Early Medieval Rajasthan: the making and maintaining of the Dilwara Temples, Mt. We visit a temple to either offer our prayers to the deity or admire the overall art and architecture of it. Admiring the aspects of art and architecture would generally include the form and composition of the temple structure and the iconography of the deity etc. What we often tend to miss out is to learn as to how the temple came to be as it is? Who funds the construction of the temple structure? Well there is no point in admiring the beauty of the engravings and the idol unless we know the reason why and how it was made. This is where we turn to study about the Patron or the donor who gives patronage or make donations to the temple. The act of patronage can be made to other fields too like, literature, music, painting, and politics but for this assignment, I would stick to the patronage of the temples with main focus on the Dilwara Temples of Mount. Abu, Rajasthan. .
As mentioned earlier, Patronage involves the act of giving and it is in this sense that patronage is seen at parallels with the terms, 'Dana' and 'Dakshina'. The common factor between these terms is the 'act of giving' but these terms are not all synonyms of each other. 'Dana can be described as bestowing, granting, yielding, and presentation irrespective of what is being given and when.' Historian Vijay Nath concludes by saying that Dakshina, though it is seen as a religious gift made for ritualistic duty must be treated partly as a priestly fee. .
The reason for this being that Dakshina was obligatory and had to be paid to the officiating priest at the end of the religious ceremony. He further says that, 'even when Dakshina accompanied Dana, it may have been more of remunerations for the priest who helped with the ritual.' The earliest sources which talk about Dana as an important function of the society are the 'Dana-stutis' and these talk about the people who made generous donations.