Hajarimalmuni Smruti Granth

Author(s): Shobhachad Bharilla
Publisher: Hajarimalmuni Smruti Granth Prakashan Samiti Byavar

Page 1019

६६ : मुनि श्रीहजारीमल स्मृति-ग्रन्थ
They are the perfect beings. There is nothing other which is as perfect. There is no other God. The freed souls are divine in nature, as they are perfect and omniscient. For the Jaina it is not necessary to surrender to any higher being nor to ask for any divine favour for the individual to reach the highest goal of perfection. There is no place for divine grace, nor is one to depend on the capricious whims of a superior deity for the sake of attaining the highest ideal. There is emphasis on individual efforts in the moral and spiritual struggle for self-realization. One has to go through the fourteen stages of spiritual struggle before one reaches the final goal in the ayoga kevali stage. These stages are the guṇasthānas. IV. However, the struggle for perfection is long and ardous. Few reached perfection; and perhaps, as tradition would say, none would become perfect in this age. Among those who have reached omniscience and perfection are the tirthankaras, the prophets, who have been the beacon lights of Jaina religion and culture. They have preached the truth and have helped men to cross the ocean of this worldly existence. They led men, like kindly light, to the path of spiritual progress. Therefore, they need to be worshipped. The Jainas worship the tirthankaras not because they are Gods, nor because they are powerful in any other way, but because they are human, and yet divine, as every one is divine in his essential nature. The worship of the tirthankaras is to remind us that they are to be kept as odeals before us in our journey to self-realization. No favours are to be sought by means of worship; nor are they compentent to bestow favours on the devotees. The main motive of worship of the tirthankaras, therefore, is to emulate the example of the perfect beings, if possible, atleast to remind us that the way to perfection lies in the way they have shown us. Even this worship of tirthankaras arose out of the exigencies of social and religious existence and survival and possibly as a psychological necessity. We find a few temples of Gandhiji today, perhaps, there would be many more. The Buddha has been deified. Apart from the worship of tirthankaras, we find a pantheon of Gods who are worshipped and from whom favours are sought. The cult of the 'yaksini' worship and of other attendant Gods may be cited as examples. This type of worship is often attended by the occult practices and the tantric and mantric ceremonialism. Dr. P.B. Desai shows that in Tamilnad Yaksiņi was allotted an independent status and raised to a superior position which was almost equal to that of the Jaina. In some instances, the worship of Yakşiņi appears to have superseded even that of Jina.12 Padmavati, Yakşiņi of Pārsvanāth, has been elevated to the status of a superior deity with all the ceremonial worship in Pombuccapura in Mysore area. These forms of worship must have arisen out of the contact with other competing faiths and with the purpose of popularising the Jaina faith in the context of the social and religious competition. The cult of Jwālāmālini with its tantric accompanishments may be mentioned as another example of this motivation. The promulgator of this cult was, perhaps, Helācārya of Ponnur. According to the prevailing belief at that time, mastery over spells and mantravidyā was considered as a qualification for superiority. The Jaina ācāryas claimed to be master mantravādins.13 Jainism had to compete with the other Hindu creeds. Yakși form of worship must have been introduced in order to attract the common men towards Jainism, by appealing to the popular forms of worship.
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