Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 38

176
JAIN JOURNAL
anyhow evident from the Kathākoşa, or Jaina folk-lore, that the Jaina worship many gods. Their chief objects of worship are the Jina, or Tirthakara, whom they adore with flowers and incense and candles. Hymms of praise are sung in their honour, and pilgrimages are made to places hallowed by their memories. But, like the Buddhists they allow the existence of the Hindu gods, and have admitted into their worship any of those that are connnected with the tales of their saints, e.g., Indra, Sakra, Garuda, Sarasvati, Laksmi. They have quite a pantheon, now of Bhuvanapati, Asura, Naga, Gandhana, &c., inhabiting the celestial and infernal regions, mountains, forests, and lower air.41
Each Tirthakara has a separate cinha, or sign, which is usually placed below his image. An excellent list of the Jina, from Rishabha to Mahavira, appears in Burgess's Cave Temples of India. Each Jina is accompanied by his distinctive sign (e.g., vrşa-bull, seşa-hooded snake), his colour, and his place of Nirvana. There are five favourites among the twenty-four, especially the first, twenty-third, and twentyfourth.
Jaina Temples
The Jaina possess some of the most remarkable places of pilgrimage in India, situated in the midst of most lovely mountain scenery, in the west, and south, and east. At Palitana, in Kathiawar, West India, is the temple-covered hill of Satrunjaya, the most sacred of the pilgrimage-resorts of the Jaina, so that Jaina from all parts of India desire to erect temples upon it. There are temples of every size, from three feet square to large marble halls, with columns and towers and plenty of openings. The latter are thus graphically described by Fergusson42 : "They are situated in tuks, or separate enclosures, surrounded by high fortified walls; the smaller ones line the silent streets. A few Yati, or priests, sleep in the temples, and perform the daily services, and a few attendants are constantly there to keep the place clean, or to feed the sacred pigeons, who are the sole denizens of the spot ; but there are no human habitations, properly so called, within the walls. The pilgrim or the stranger ascends in the morning, and returns when he has performed his devotions or satisfied his curiosity. He must not eat, or at least must not cook his food, on the sacred hill, and he must not sleep there. It is the city of the gods, and meant for them only, and not intended for the use of mortals.' Some of these temples date from the eleventh century, but the majority have been built in the present century.
41 Fergusson and Burgess, Cave Temples of India, p. 488. 42 Fergusson, History of Architecture, vol, iii, bk. ii. p. 226.