Facets of Jaina Religiousness in Comparative Light

Author(s): L M Joshi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 59

FACETS OF JAINA RELIGIOUSNESS
semi-secular arts of India.49
Professor Roth has cited three verses from the Pratyekabuddha Karakaņdu illustrating the employment of the pamca-namokkāra invocations for the sake of protection against all sorts of evils and dangers.” Paumāvai Devi, having lost herself in the wilderness of a forest, is said to have ultimately remembered the formulae of five-fold obeisance. We quote Professor Roth's translation :
"The formula of the Five Invocations is for this reason my refuge, because this indeed brings happiness in this and in the other worlds. And it is said :
“Through the eminent incantation of the obeisance-formula, the dangers of disease, flood, fire, thieves, of the fight with lions and elephants, and of snakes, instantaneously vanish. (1)
And the danger from female goblins, vampires, bears and murderers has not any power over it. All perils vanish through the power of the obeisance-formula. (2)
And further :
In whose heart-cavity the lion-like obeisance-formula is constantly located, for them the elephants' attack-like confrontation with the eight knots of Karma has completely vanished' (3)."50
This kind of description of magical powers of this sacred formula is found in many Jaina texts of medieval date.51
Closely associated with the formula of five-fold obeisance is the formula of fourfold refuge (catuḥ-saraņa).52 It is also an important part of daily Jaina pājā and reads thus :
I take refuge in the four (cattāri saranam pavvajjāmi)--- I take refuge in the arhats (arahante saranam pavvajjāmi) I take refuge in the siddhas (siddhe saranam pavvajjämi) I take refuge in the sādhus (sādhu saranam pavvajjämi)
49.
Quite interesting and valuable details about the theory and practice of mantra will be found in the following works - Mohanlal B. Jhavery. Comparative an! Critical Study of Mantrafastra (with special treatment of Jaina Mantravada); Agehananda Bharati The Tontri Tradition; Lama Anagarika Govinda, The Foundations of Tibetan Mysti 'ism : Gopinātha Kavirāja, Bharatiya Samskrti
aur sa hana, Part 1; and Teun Goudriaan, Māyā Divine and Human See Bibliogrphy below. 50. Gustav Roth, op cit., pp. 5-7. 51. See Nemichandra Shastri, Mangalamantra Namokara: eka Anuintana.
See K.R. Norman, Causarana-Painnaya : Edition and Translation" in The Adyar Library Bulletin, vol. XXXVIII, 1974, pp 44ff.