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Umakant P. Shah
unattached, freed from all the bondages of karma, whether good or bad. The worshipper simply meditates on the virtues of the Divinity so that they may manifest in the worshipper himself. The Perfect souls and souls striving towards perfection, are Great souls, the S'alakapurusas as the Jainas call them.
This in essence is Hero worship or Apostle worship and as such, great souls, both ascetic and non-ascetic came to be especially revered. Lives of great souls became the favourite theme of Jaina Puranas. Such S'alkapurusas were the 24 Tirthankaras + 12 Cakravartins + 9 Baladevas + 9 Vasudevas = 54 Mahapurusas. Later texts speak of 63 S'alákápurusas by counting nine Prati-Vasudevas (enemies of Vasudevas) amongst the Great souls. 1
Four Classes of Gods, Kulakaras and other Deities :
The Sthananga sutra and other Jaina canons classify gods into four main groups, namely, the Bhavanavasis, the Vyantaras or the Vanamantaras, the Jyotiskas and the Vimanavāsis. These are again subdivided into several groups with Indras, Loka palas, Queens of these and so on.
The classification, acknowledged by both the sects though not without slight differences, is a very old tradition, but these are after all deities of a secondary nature in the Jaina Pantheon.1.
But there were other Great souls. The Jainas also evolved a conception of Kulakaras like the Manus of Hindu mythology. They were 14 according to the Digambaras and 7 according to the S'vetambaras.
Every sect draws its pantheon from the ancient deities worshipped by the masses and adopts them in a manner suitable to the new environment and doctrines. Such for example was the worship of the deities whose shrines existed in the days of Mahavira and whose images and festivals are referred to in the Jajna Agama literature. They include Indra, Rudra, Skanda, Mukunda, Vasudeva, Vais'ramana (or Kubera), Yaksa, Bhutas, Naga, Pis'aca, trees etc., Loka palas and so on.
1. For on account and paintings of these S'alakapurusas, see, Muni Punyavijaya and Suah, U, P.,
Some Painted Wooden Book Covers from W. India, Western Indian Art (Special issue of Journal of Indian Society of Oriental Art (1965-66), pp. 34 ff, esp. pp.36-38, and plates XXIV-XXV, and p. 43, Table I for Tirthankaras, their Complexion and cognizances, and Table II, p. 44 for the different S'alakapurusas, acc, to S've, traditions. For Dig. tradition of S'alakapurusas see, Ramachandran, T. N., Tiruparuttikunram and its Temples, pp. 219 ff.
For details regarding these classes, see Kierfel, Kosmographic Der Inder section on Cosmographic Der Jaina Tiloypanpatti; Samgrahani Sutra; Bunler, The Indian Sect of the Jainas; Ramachandran, T. N., Tiruparuttikunram and its Temples, pp. 185 ff.
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