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THE PURE AND THE AUSPICIOUS IN THE JAINA TRADITION
The inauspiciousness of the funeral pyre not with standing, the Jainas have thus claimed that whatever sanctity fire has is solely derived from its contact with the dead body of the Jaina ascetic.
What is true of fire is probably true likewise of the other material elements (mahābhūtas): earth, water and wind. It is wellknown that the Hindus also regard these elements as sacred and worship them in various forms, considering them to be agents of purity. However, no hymn to earth, such as found in the Atharvaveda.16 is attested to in Jaina texts. Jainas have decried all forms of respect shown to inanimate objects such as fields, stones, mounds or mountains. The Hindu custom of expiatory bathing in rivers and oceans, and worship of the Ganges and other rivers as holy objects, are totally unknown to the Jainas. 17 In fact, the Jainas prefer to use boiled water even for bathing and Jaina monks are not allowed even to touch cold water. All these material substances, including the wind element, are believed by the Jainas to be the bodies of one-sensed (ekendriya) beings, who constitute a form of life.
Vegetable life has also been trated by the Jainas in a manner similar to the mahabhūtas. The Hindus regard certain leaves, flowers and trees as more sacred than others, and make definite association between these with certain gods and goddesses. The Jainas, however, have show a totally different attitude toward vegetable life. The vegetable kingdom for the Jainas constitutes one of the lowest forms of life, called nigoda, and they are wamed against destroying these beings. The Jainas are forbidden to eat a large number of fruits and vegetables, especially those with many seeds, like figs, or those which grow underground like potatoes. The Jaina spares their lives not because he considers them sacred or inhabited by divinities, but because they are the abodes of an infinite number of souls clustered together. The Jaina mendicant has even stricter dietary restriction, and is advised to avoid all forms of greens, since they are
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still alive; hence he subsists mainly on cereals and dried fruits which have no seeds. 18 He may neither kindle a fire nor extinguish one; he may neither draw water from a well nor fan himself. He thus protects
the minute life present in these material elements. Even in modern Jaina monaastic residences (upâśraya) the monks or nuns still live without lights or fans.
These observations should be adquate to show that the Jainas have not regarded as sacred those objects which are universally accepted as pure and auspicious by the Hindus. By repudiating the sanctity of these material objects, as well as of the "sacred cow" and the Brahmana casts, the Jainas would seem to have divorced worldly life from the notion of purity. They see sacredness instead in renunciation, which is attributed not to any particular caste but to a group of people: the ascerics who embody renunciation and render other things sacred and pure only by their association with these people.
The Jaina rejection of the inherent purity of the material elements does not imply, however, that the Jainas refuse to accept any object as being auspicious and symbolic of wealth, fame and prosperity. A Tirthankara's mother, for example, is said to witness certain dreams at the moment of the
conception of the child. 19 These dreams include such animals as a white elephant, a white bull and a lion; divinities like the sun, the moon, and the goddess Śri; and objects like garlands of flowers, vases filled with water, an ocean of milk, a heap of jewels, and pair of fish. All these are no doubt considered auspicious by the Hindus as well. The Jaina households and their temples are not devoid of some form of these representations. But what is significant is the Jaina insistence that these are not true mangalas (auspicious objects). They receive such status solely because of local custom (deśācāra or lokācāra) and, hence, are not sanctioned by the sacred texts.
The Jainas explain the term mangala as: (1)
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