Jain Rup Mandan

Author(s): Umakant P Shah
Publisher: Abhinav Publications

Page 66

CHAPTER FIVE
Notes on the Jaina Pantheon
(1) BACKGROUND OF JAINA COSMOGRAPHY
According to Jainism, the shape of the Cosmos is fixed and unchangeable. Fourteen rajjusa in height, it is not uniform in breadth-broadest at the bottom, narrowest at the centre, broader still above and at the top narrower once again. The shape of the cosmos (loka) is best compared with a man standing in the vaisākha position, with arms akimbo, at the bottom resembling a vetrāsana (cane-stand), in the middle a jhallari (circular flat symbol or gong) and at the top a muraja (mrdanga). It is filled with three worldslower, middle and upper, the terms being used with reference to Rucaka. The centre of the cosmos comprises the madhya-loka-middle world with the abodes of human and lower beings, and extending nine hundred yojanas above and below Rucaka.
The lower world or adho-loka is made up of seven earths, one below the other, in which are terrifying abodes of hell inhabitants: Ratnaprabhā, Sarkarāprabhā, Valukaprabhā, Pankaprabha, Dhūmaprabhā, Tamahprabha and Mahātamahprabha.5 The Ratnaprabha is divided into three parts; the uppermost, called the khara-bhāga, has in its central regions abodes of all the classes of the Bhavanavāsi-devas except the Asurakumāras, and of the various classes of the Vyantara gods except the Raksasas. The middle part of the Ratnaprabha is called the parka-bhāga wherein stay the Asurakumāras and the Rākşasas. Remaining parts of the lower world contain hells wherein live the närakas or hellish beings, ugly and grotesque in appearance and tortured mercilessly by the Asurakumiras and fifteen other classes of celestial beings known as amba, ambaras, sama, sabala, rudra, mahārudra, käla, mahākāla, asipatra, dhanu, kumbha, vālu, vetarani, kharasvara and mahäghosa.
The middle world, a rather circular body, consists of numerous concentric dvipas or island continents with intervening oceans separating any two of them. In its centre is the Mount Meru, golden and surrounded by the Jambu-dvipa, the latter being encircled by the lavanoda ocean. Then comes the Dhätakikhanda-dvipa followed by kaloda-samudra, then the Puşkaravara-dvipa and the puşkaroda-samudra, the Várunivara-dvipa and the värunivara-samudra, the Kșiravara and the kşiroda, the Ghftavara and the ghstoda, the Ikşuvara and the iksuvaroda, the Nandiśvara and the nandiśvaroda. Human beings are found only in the first two dvipas and the first half of the third one. At the end of countless continents and oceans is the great ocean known as the Svayambhuramana.
The Jambu-dvipa, placed in the centre of the middle world, is the most important of all the continents. Six ranges of mountains divide this Jambu-dvipa into seven regions (kşetras): Bharata, Haimavata, Hari, Videha, Ramyaka, Hairanyavata and Airavata. The six mountain ranges known as varsadharaparvatas are: Himavat, Mahāhimavat, Nişadha, Nila, Rukmin and Sikharin. On their tops are six lakes, namely, Padma, Mahāpadma, Tigiñcha, Kesari, Mahāpundarika and Pundarika respectively, each having a big lotus-island (padma-hrada, full-blown lotus, rooted ten yojanas in water) in its centre. In these islands live the six goddesses Sri, Hri, Dhști, Kirti, Buddhi and Lakşmi respectively, 8 attended by sāmānikas, gods of councils, bodyguards, and armies.
In each of the seven kşetras is a pair of chief rivers -Ganga and Sindhu, Rohit and Rohitäsyä (or