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religlous merit and final emancipation, but also with attainment of desired sense-objects and their enjoyment.
reference
to the
There is an allusion to the procedure of plucking the hair off the head of a girl at the time of her initiation into the Jain nun-order. The author also refers to the Jainistic concept of sixfold religious duty consisting of mental worship of god, service to one's preceptor, daily study of religious scriptures, faith in the life of abstinence, observance of utmost possible penance, and charity, as essential religious duties of the householders.10 Jinabhadrasūri seems to have coined this idea from the parallel Brahmaņico-Purānic concept of the 'Şat-karmas' as already adopted in Jainism on practical level and preached by authors like Dhanapala in his “Savayavihr and similar works. Meditation (praạidhava) on the five basic Jaina Salutational Formula (pañca-namaskāras) is to be effected by controlling the activities of all the three internal organs, viz., mind, intellect and ego. 11 The greatness of the five-fold salutational formula is extolled in seven verses where they are regarded as the be-all and end-all and the very essence of Jainism in a nutshell.12
A few of the peculiar popular religious beliefs seem to have been echoed here and there in the work. Listening to religious instruction of Jalnism at the time of death is believed to conduce to the attainment of divine pleasures in the heaven and the knowledge of past birth,13 echoing as if the parallel ideas of the Bhagavadgitā.14 Highest happiness of human beings depends on the faultless merit of religious observances, and not on the celestial beings.15
At times we find depiction of Jaina tenets. He states that the state of emancipation is associated with the element of happiness,16 One must seek the highest joy by meditating on the Self (atman) which is but non-different from knowledge, and et cetara, and different from one's body, relatives and external objects.17
8. Op. cit., p. 46 (8ff.). 9. Op. cit., p. 112, vs. 272. 10. Op. cit., p. 53, vs. 113. 11. Ibid., p. 105 (7). 12. Ibid., pp. 105-106, vs. 247-253. 13. Op. cit., p. 129 (7ff.). 14. B.G. IV, 42 ; VIII, 5. 15. Op. cit., p. 130, vs, 320. 16. Op cit., p. 106, vs. 253. 17. Op. cit., p. 105, vs. 246.
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