The fort of Dabhoi is one of the rare surviving examples of Hindu military architecture, based on the
shastri traditions described in various
Vastu scriptures. According to the 19th century source, the fort complex covered an area of 800 x 1000 sq. yards. There are four gates in the town, one in each cardinal direction, having indirect entry, located in the middle of each side of the fort wall. These gates are: Hira gate or Hira Bhagol in the east, Baroda or Vadodara gate in the west, Chandod or Nandod gate in the south, and Champaner, Mori, Mahudi or Mahmudi gate in the north.
Baroda or Vadodara, Chandod, and
Champaner gates lead to the cities by those names, whereas the Hira gate was the entrance to the Kalika Temple. The origin of the name "Hīrā" (literally "diamond" or "jewel") for the Hira gate is unclear. According to legend, it was named after its builder, a master mason named Hīrā.
Hiranand Sastri dismissed both this and the literal interpretation as "a jewel of gates" as unsatisfactory; he suggested a possible connection to
Hīra, an epithet of Shiva, since a now-ruined temple of Shiva-Vaidyanatha exists immediately south of the gate, but called his own suggestion "pedantic". The Hira gate has been heavily modified since its original construction, especially the outer side; the inner, city-facing side is more intact, although its middle part has also been rebuilt. The gate was probably originally covered in intricate carvings, but very little has survived on the actual gate part; the extant carving is mostly on the northern side adjoining the Kalika-Mata temple, and on parts of the south side where the Vaidyanatha shrine partly survives (although most of this area is also no longer extant). The Vadodara gate is the best-preserved of the four gates, and is mostly intact. It originally had six
bracketed supports, resting atop
pilasters and each supporting an
architrave, but the third from the outside was later replaced with an archway. The original
cornices overhanging both sides are only partially preserved today. The Mahudi and Nandod gates are not as tall as the Vadodara gate, and they each have only four brackets instead of six, but they are ornately carved. The Mahudi gate was completed in
VS 1344 (i.e. 1287-88
CE), about 33 years after the Someshvara prashasti. Among its elaborate sculptures (helpfully labelled), the largest and most prominent is Shiva, depicted here as
Naṭarāja, the king of dancers. This depiction portrays Shiva as the divine creator, with the movement of his dancing setting the universe in motion. The other deities depicted here (all smaller than Shiva) include
Parvati,
Ganesha,
Bhringi,
Brahmani, and
Chamunda. As for the Nandod gate, it originally featured a sculptural depiction of the
Trimurti, but the sculpture of Vishnu is now missing, leaving only Shiva (seated on
Nandi) and Brahma. The city walls are now mostly demolished, presumably dismantled to provide stone for building other structures. A few stretches of the walls remain, especially a mostly-intact section by the Vadodara Gate. One of the corner towers, by the train station, has become a Muslim religious site called the pānch-bībī-kī-dargāh, where supposedly five young Muslim women are buried. There is a large artificial
tank in the middle of the town, irregular in shape and with a piece of land jutting out into it on the south side. There is a small shrine on the west side of this piece of land, with its floor now submerged beneath the water's surface; it was probably originally a temple of Shiva. == Geography ==