Notes on Modern Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Oxford

Page 97

JAINA WORSHIP.
The Jaina seem always to have chosen for their sanctuaries the crests of wooded hills. In Western India there are three shrines of special sanctity and beauty to which the S'vetāmbara and Digambara Jaina go on pilgrimage.
The most sacred of these," the first of places of pilgrimage, the bridal hall of those who would marry everlast
ing rest," is the hill of S'atrunjaya, near S'atrunjaya. Pālitānā in Käthiāwād. This hill, which is sacred to A'dinātha, rises to the height of some 1977 feet above sea level, and the summit is entirely covered with temples. “Street after street, and square after square, extend these shrines of the Jain faith, with their stately enclosures, half palace, half fortress, raised, in marble magnificence, upon the lonely and majestic mountain."* Indeed, so many are the temples, that to go round them all is said to require ninety-nine pilgrimages.
Mount Gimnār, ( the hill of Neminātha), can be seen on a clear day from S'atrunjaya, to which it is only second
in sanctity. It is situated in the Mahome
dan State of Junāgadh, and its summit is gained by the most magnificent stairway in the world. Aicht upon flight of stone steps, which lead from the plain beneath, past the Neminātha fortress with its wealth of temples, to the highest of the five peaks, some 3,666 feet above the level of the sea.
* A. K. Forbes. Rās Mālā pp. 5, 6.
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