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The Pathway to Perfection
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pāda and Sumantabhadra have devotional songs addressed to Jaina. Akalanka has given us Rajavartika on the one side Akalanka-stotra on the other.
The Jaina Ācāryas have distinguished twelve types of bhakti. However they have not made distinction between 'nirguna' and 'saguna' bhakti, although there have been devotional songs of the pure and perfect souls and of the tirthaikaras as they preached the dharma to the people. 86 The 'pancaparameşti bhakti'. (devotion and worship of the five superior souls, is psychologically important as it presents the five types of the graded purified souls. The namokāra mantra, (offering obescience to the five purified souls) has the greatest importance in the Jaina way of worship for self-purification. We offer our salutations to (i) Arihantas, (ii) the Siddhas, (iii) Ācāryas, (iv) Upādhyāyas and (v) all sādhus.
Apart from the worship of tirthankaras, we find a pantheon of Gods who are worshipped and from whom favours are sought. The cult of the ‘yakşiņi' worship and of other attendant Gods may be cited as examples. This type of worship is often attended by the occult practices and the tantric and mantric ceremonialism. Dr. P. B. Desai shows that in Tamilnad Yakşiņi was allotted an independent status and raised to a superior position which was almost equal to that of the Jina. In some instances, the worship of Yaksini appears to have superseded even that of Jina. Padmavati, Yakşini of Pārsvanatha, has been elevated to the status of a superior deity with all the ceremonial worship in Pombuccapura in Mysore area. These forms of worship must have arisen out of the contact with other competing faiths and with the purpose of popularising the Jaina faith in the context of the social and religious competition. The cult of Jwālāmālini with its tantric
30. Jaina Premasagara : Jaina Bhakti Kavya kiprşțabhūmi (Hindi)
Bharatiya Jnana Pitha, Kashi, 1963, Ch. 3. 31. Desai (P. B.) : Juinism in South India, (1957), p. 72.
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