Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

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significance by inhabiting trees, pools, mountains and groves, while opening up to humans the wealth, health and fertility contained within the natural world. They are, in short, the masters of all things carnal, and as such, maintain a popularity among the public while being courted, adapted and denounced by Brahmanism and the renouncer (sramana) traditions.
Jainism, like Buddhism and Hinduism, eventually began to absorb and adapt aspects of this popular religious tradition in an effort to remain pertinent and accessible to the laity. U.P. Shah summarizes this process by stating:
Thus the deities of the people who formed the earliest inhabitants of India... were being incorporated gradually by Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism...it is in the beliefs and practices of these ancient inhabitants of India that the origin of the worship of a large number of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina deities ultimately lies.2
This paper will explore the truth of the above statements in an effort to identify this popular (or laukika) tradition as the medium through which ancient images known from the Indus culture entered Jainism. To suggest, however, that the meanings of these images remained the same throughout time would be to falsely impose a 1,200 year stagnancy on Indian culture whose dynamic history of intellectual, religious and political change denies any such assumption. Instead, I argue for the continued religious importance of this iconography relayed through the medium of the popular tradition from the times of the Indus culture (c.2000-1700 B.C.E.) until its incorporation into the emergent religious traditions of the fifth century B.C.E.. And to what degree, if any, these images retained their initial meanings must remain a matter of speculation due to our lack of information about their role in Indus culture and society. Nevertheless, the contexts in which these images occur
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