Bhinmal (Bhillamala, Shrimala)

01Brahmagupta’s city

Brahmagupta tells us himself that he wrote the Brahmasphutasiddhanta in Shaka 550, that is 628 CE, at the age of thirty, in the reign of Vyaghramukha of the Chapa family. Tradition calls him Bhillamalacharya, the teacher of Bhillamala. In that book he gave the rules for working with zero and with debts and fortunes, negative and positive numbers, and solved equations the Greeks never touched; translated into Arabic at Baghdad in the 8th century, it carried Indian astronomy west. Xuanzang passed this way around 641 and described the capital of ‘Kiu-che-lo’, the Gurjara land, under a young Kshatriya king. The poet Magha, author of the Shishupalavadha, is also remembered as a son of Shrimala.

02Raids and the later town

When the Arab governor of Sindh, Junayd, sent raids east around 725 CE, al-Baladhuri lists al-Bailaman, Bhinmal, among the places attacked. The Gurjara-Pratiharas and the Chahamanas of Jalore held the region after. The Shrimali Brahmins and the Shrimal and Porwal Jain merchant families take their name from the town, and it keeps the Jagatswami Surya temple, Varaha Shyam’s temple and the Nilkanth Mahadev temple among its old shrines.

The life of this place