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BHAKTI IN JAIN TRADITION : 55
leads them to worship, venerate, etc through expression of love, respect and gratitude. This in turn is expressed in form of music, dance and various other rituals.
Therefore, there is an apparent contradiction in Jainism when on one hand in the way of self-effort there is no place for personal God to be worshipped and on the other in the medieval period Bhakti became an important phenomenon in Jainism. In both the major Śramaņa traditions- Jainism and Buddhism, the Tīrthankaras and Arhats, who propounded the non-theistic religions, were themselves worshipped like gods by lay devotees of both the religions installing their idols, constructing their temples and doing Pūjā with flowers etc. In the course of time it so happened in the Jain tradition that the Tīrthankaras who propounded the religious path, which consisted of various austerities- both external and internal, now became the subject of worship in the form of their idols. More emphasis was placed on the external worship and the person involved in performing such worship were regarded as more religious. This practice was then justified on the grounds that such a veneration of the Tīrthankaras reminds people of the virtues of those venerable ones and the way of living and the progressive path propounded by them. But it so happened that in the course of time the values were replaced by mere worship and it was believed that mere elaborate worship involving huge costly rituals (Various Pūjās) would open the way of liberation.
Lonkā has questioned this type of idolatry in his bola which says that “guņa ārādhya che” (virtue is worth respecting and acquiring). “According to Jain legends the practice of image worship in Jainism is as old as the religion itself. Jains like Buddhists, worship their Tirthankaras like God and erect statues in their temples.
