Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

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

Page 46

Buddhist or Hindu tradition while its initial form, a form taken form the images of the Indus culture, remains intact.
Conclusion
The images of the Indus culture are present in all of the iconography of the emergent religious traditions of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. Furthermore, the evidence provided by Buddhist texts, Jain writers and Vedic accounts tell of a widespread popular religion existing alongside these more formalized practices. That this popular tradition, referred to as laukika by Somadeva, underwent a long period of interaction, influence and borrowing with Jainism, Buddhism and Brahmanism is further attested by both textual and physical evidence. As these religions vied for public support, popular notions of religiosity were imported, converted and adapted to fit their new religious contexts.
Therefore, having established the shared influence of the laukika traditions on all three of these religious systems, it becomes understandable how ancient imagery known in the remains of the Indus culture could have entered them while retaining its form but being given new meanings. Specifically, the images of the tree-caitya, the meditator, the svastika, bull and snake retained their potency as images of spiritual and religious authority while developing new meanings over the centuries appropriate to the new contexts in which they appeared.
Ultimately, due to the lack of physical or textual remains left us by the popular traditions in India, as well as the absence of readable texts from the Indus culture, the precise relationship between the laukika traditions and those of the Indus culture cannot be compared. It is clear, however, that this influential, popular system of beliefs practiced by peasants and kings kept alive the imagery and symbolism of the Indus culture, making them accessible to all the traditions that
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