Jain Spirit 2003 12 No 17

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

Page 47

Rituals Are Pregnant With Meaning
receives his first bath from the gods and goddesses. The story ends with the infant's return to his mother's side. While the text is sung, performers of the rite symbolically enact the events it describes, the bathing of the image as the rite's high point and climax.
The basic theme of the Snatra Pooja is the event Jain tradition considers the most crucial in all of time, which is the Tirthankara's appearance infinitely repeated in history. The truths he announces are, of course, transhistorical in nature; they are unchanging and eternal. However, they enter history only through a Tirthankara's agency, and therefore these truths
human beings (for liberation is possible only in a human body), are portrayed by the rite as the archetypal historical beings. Their worship of the infant Tirthankara bears significance at two levels: it marks the crucial importance of his appearance, and it also provides a pattern for all veneration of these great teachers. The gods become examples for human worshipers, who, as worshipers, take on the personae of Indras and Indranis.
In the performance of the rite, these ideas are conveyed with special vividness. Not only does the text tell its story in poetic words but also the performance of the rite amplifies the story's impact by the addition of singing and action. Indeed, in a real sense the worshipers actually enter the world of the Tirthankara's advent in the course of performing the rite. By singing of the acts of Indras and Indranis, by acting out the rite's narrative in the presence of the divine image and by doing so with devotional fervour, we may suppose that in their hearts and imaginations participants actually become, for a brief enchanted time, the kings and queens of the gods.
The Tirthankara's apperance in history is, of course, only the beginning of the story, which is that of a particular kind of career in the world. At the core of the career of each and every Tirthankara there are five specific events known as the five kalyanaks, the five "welfare-producing' events. They are: the descent into the womb, birth, initiation, attainment of omniscience and liberation. These events are celebrated in a specific type of rite, known as Panch Kalyanak Pooja, to which we now return.
This rite carries forward the theme of the relationship, so important to the Snatra Pooja, between Jain teachings and history. Among the most remarkable attributes of the Tirthankaras is that they are both historical and transhistorical beings. Their movements from birth to birth prior to their final lifetimes occur in what might be called 'transmigratory' time, a form of historical time lying behind visible history. Each Tirthankara has a unique transmigratory biography. Then, during his final lifetime, each has a unique personal history unfolding in normal time. But historical time - transmigratory and normal - meets the timeless in the kalyanaks. Although the specific transmigratory and biographical histories of the Tirthankaras differ, the five kalyanaks themselves are, throughout infinite time, always the same.
The Panch Kalyanak Pooja of Parsvanath illustrates this fusion. (Other such poojas exist and might also serve as examples.) As in the case of the Snatra Pooja, the rite's core is a text designed to be sung by participants. The text's author is a monk named Kavindrasagar (1905-1960), who composed many other poojas in the Khartar Gacch tradition. The text does two things. First, it describes Parsvanath's unique world career. The narrative begins with the birth in which he obtained samyaktva (right belief) and then traces his subsequent history, focusing on his
Akshat Pooja
cannot become available to us as teachings without his appearance in the stream of time. The gods and goddesses, who themselves are even more locked in the cycle of history than
PHOTO: JAMES MATURIN-BAIRD
December 2003 - February 2004
Jain Spirit 45