Jain Spirit 2002 06 No 11

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 48

ENVIRONMENT
ROBERT RADIN
history have much to do with the mountain world.
The eighth chapter of the Dasasrutaskandha of Bhadrabahu, known as the Kalpasutra, is perhaps the most widely known of all Jain texts. It is read aloud traditionally on the fiftieth night following the beginning of the monsoon, the period of so-called 'rain rest' for monks. The book describes the life of several Jinas, including Mahavir. Quietly scattered throughout the text there are mentions of mountains, beginning with one of Trisala's dreams, wherein she perceives the Goddess Sri seated amid the highest of Himalayan peaks, whilst the Sun circles the great Mount Meru (the Buddhist name for the Hindu Kailas) rising 22,028 feet in south-western Tibet. When Mahavir gives up all clothing, using his hands as a begging bowl, renounces his body and truly becomes abodeless (anagarika), his detachment is likened to the composure and imperturbability of the "Mandara Mountain', a most penetrating linguistic insight into the psychological rudiments of Jain landscape aesthetics and metaphysics.
Michael Tobias at a small ashram in India Mandara is the Japanese Buddhist form of the Sanskrit mandala, referring to a magical diagram or artistic the mountain world. As the transcendence of physical schematic. Typically, the mandala is an aid in envisioning karma is key to understanding enlightenment within Jain supreme realisation, nirvana, the Unity of Multiplicity. In tradition, it is remarkable that Jains - who are largely urban Buddhist art mandalas are paintings that lavishly describe in their lifestyles and devotion - have originated so vast a itineraries to paradise or fashion some vision of the wilderness ideology. Otherworld, usually a mountain kingdom populated by
The iconographical bastions of Jain tradition, the deities. Inherent to the mountain Otherworld was a mountain as well as the cave, emerge repeatedly in the philosophical system of meditating on the image to foster Kalpasutra. Parsva is described as dying while in transcendence and achieve all the ethical and spiritual goals meditation on the summit of Mount Sammet; Aristanemi inherent to Buddhism.
passes quietly away atop Mount The art form of the mandala,
Ujjayanta (Girnar); Rishabhnath painted across countless temple walls,
"Mountains are catapults breathes his last whilst in deep thought in caves, on cloth or silk, was
on the summit of Mount Astapada. All developed in India prior to its adoption
these Jain places where individuals have across Asia and the Orient. In its
achieved nirvana are known as Siddhabroadest form, the mandala suggests
kshetra, of which the five principal ones the full ecological complement of enlightenment which was happen to be mountains: Mt. Abu in Rajasthan, pan-Indian to the core. But it was also Jain in the form of Shatrunajaya in Gujarat, Girnar in Saurashtra, Sammet the jinapatas wherein a Tirthankara was depicted as Shikhar in Bihar and the above-mentioned Astapada enthroned in the centre of a samavasarana, the gathering somewhere at the centre of all creation. Caves are equally place or hall for the delivery of a Jina's first sermon. These pervasive in Jain art and tradition. Consider, for example, places were mountain villages, as painted, surrounded by those dark abysses at Barabar, Nagarjuni, Sonbhandar, eight terraces upon which the first Jina, Rishabhnath along Saurashtra, Camar Lena, Bhamer, Dharasinva, Kotri and with nineteen other subsequent Tirthankaras are believed to Sita-ki Nahani. Jain rock hermitages are found in both have died (all atop Mount Sammet Shikhar in Bihar). In northern and southern India. Whole groups of Jain caves addition, the five Merus - said to be the central mountains are to be found at Sittanavasal, Aihole, Vatapi and Ellora, of five continents - also figure prominently in the jinapatas. where there are five such celebrated recesses, to name but a This art form is also replicated in the caumukh temples in few. Even many exterior temples are hewn from a cliff such which a world mountain (Meru) is again surrounded by as that of Shravana Belgola, with the huge Gommatesvara representations of the Tirthankara. These mountain config- statue (Bahubali, son of Rishabhnath) upon Vindhyagiri urations replaced the Hindu stupas - an architectural form connoting enlightenment, burial and the Himalayas, to
The physical identification with mountain lairs and varying degrees - but sustained the physical components of sanctuaries in Jain tradition bespeaks of an absolute religious transcendence being described and facilitated by retirement from the mundane world; a renunciation and
to Moksha.”
hill.
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Jain Spirit . June - August 2002