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88
MODERN JAINISM.
The pujāri, not being a monk, was unshaven and wore a moustache. In the adjoining temples the pujāri are Hindus and so take far less interest in the worship than the Jaina we had the opportunity of watching bere ; in fact we did not happen to meet in A’bu a single S'vetāmbara pujāri who knew the Sloka proper to the various acts of worship.
After bathing, the pujāri entered the shrine and washed the sacred vessels and the smaller wooden table in front of the large figure. Taking a duster, and regardless apparently of any small inseets he might be killing, he cleaned the inner shrine with resounding whacks of his cloth and roughly swept the steps.
After having placed a little heap of yellow powder on the washed table, he proceeded to dust the figure of A'dinātha by dealing it several smacks on its face with his duster. Then, more reverently, he stood in front of the image and gently poured a little water on its forehead, mopping up the drops as they fell and wiping it all over, first with a damp and then with a dry cloth.
Both here and on Mount Girnār the Digambara pujāri were most careful lest any water should fall to the groundthey said that if even a drop fell, it would be accounted a sin-whereas the Svetāmbara were quite careless on this point.*
In the same way he wiped the marble of the inner shrine and then the other Tirtharkara in the body of the * Dr. Burgess, however, in the book already mentioned gives as one
of the differences between Digambaras and S'vetämbaras that the former “bathe their images with abundance of water but the S'vetämbaras use very little.” Dig. Jaina Iconography, p. 2.
