Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

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

Page 31

other texts tell of special groups of clerics, known as yatis and bhattarakas, who specialized in dealing with yaksas. In this way it seems that some of the Jain community took on the function of acting as intermediaries between the minor deities and the public. The growing importance and authority granted to these deities is also attested to in the physical evidence. For example, in the remains of early structures and sculpture it is clear that the yaksas could only be worshipped in conjunction with the Jinas but, after some time, we begin to see separate shrines dedicated to honouring the yaksas themselves. 12
Naturally, this sort of divergence from the goals of Jainism met with a strict backlash as both the monastic community and the laity worked to set right these trends away from the Jainism's sramana foundations. In fact, there are records of public protests against caitya-vasis, or "templedwelling" monks who were denounced as not being true mendicants in keeping with the Jain traditions of renunciation. 13 Likewise, in the eight century texts were written in which the authors describe explicitly how to stop worshipping non-Jain deities and replace them with the Jain attendant deities in an effort to limit the amount and type of popular influence entering Jain practice. 14 Similarly, it was in response to the trend toward popular religion that Somadeva wrote his tenth century text declaring what was and was not acceptable behaviour for a Jain. In his effort to stem the tide of popular influences on Jain practice Somadeva denounced the worship of the sun, fire, trees, mounds of earth and cows while also forbidding the Vedic evening sacrifice (sandya) and the worship of the pitraloka whose funerary function contradicted Jain teachings on rebirth. 15 These trends against the influx of popular religion seem to have been effective and by the thirteenth century the authority and importance of these minor deities had dwindled to the point where Pandita Asadhara was able to describe yaksas as being "only for the ignorant."16 This movement away from the honouring of deities reached its
28