Jain Journal 1971 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 46

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JAIN JOURNAL
The religion gains depth by means of the bearers of the linga, As a mine of jewels gain depth by being filled with caustic waters. Since Jaina saints, even though alarmed, solicit for alms the bearers
of the linga, Why is the respect shown to them blamed by righteous men afraid of
rebirth ? Even those who carry pictures leave the land before these, But disrespect to the linga-bearers, while they stay in the land, is
inconsistent Those who show contempt in the world towards those who live by
carrying lingas, Those wicked men are tainted with the guilt of extirpating a religion.
And this is written in the Avaš yakaniryukti :
He, who knowing for certain that the virtues of Tirthankaras do
not exist in their pictures, Worships a picture, because it represents a Tirthankara, obtains
great destruction of karman If men worship a linga appointed by a Jina, there is great destruction
of karman, Even if a man worships what is devoid of merit, it tends to spiritual
purification.
By these admonitions the mirror of the minister's righteousness was polished, and with a mind specially devoted to honouring religion, he returned to his own place.
Then his elder brother, the great minister, named Luniga, when he was on the point of going to the next world, asked for religious expenditure on his account, saying, “You must make a fitting chapel in my name in the vasahikā of Mount Abu.” When he died, Vastupala could not obtain the ground from the members of the society to which his brother belonged, and so he begged a new piece of ground from the king of Candravati near the vasahikā of Vimala, and had built there the temple of Luniga's vasahikā, which is the champion caitya of the three worlds. There he erected an image of Neminatha and then the minister invited from Jabalipura the famous minister Yasovira, who was skilled in determining the good and bad points of such edifices, and asked him to give an opinion on the character of the temple. Then Yasovira said to Sobhanadeva, the architect that made the temple, “In the painted vestibule the broad passage between the two statues is altogether inappropriate in the temple of a Tirthankara, and is forbidden by the