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RITUALS AND HEALING: THE CASE OF THE JAIN COMMUNITY IN MEDIEVAL INDIA
SHALIN JAIN
This paper intends to discuss the role of textual values embedded in biographies of minority Jain monks, didactic stories and hymns dealing with rituals and specific cases of healing in Medieval India. The symbolic gestures and traditions of the Jain community cultivated such a genre. This phenomenon may be explained from the ways in which religious communities produce material goods and from the ways in which they reproduce social relations. The Jains produced socially through relations which defined and ordered their world in morally significant ways. The organized peects and their propagators were performing rituals and acts of healing to enhance their influence as well to gain legitimacy, while for individuals it was a matter of faith. This not only fulfilled the obligation of charity (dāna) and public service but also helped to satisfy the individual's need for achieving the proper mental attitude for guidance by following the proper rituals. Many a Jain hymns have been credited with the miraculous power of healing. The Jain religious composers and authors intentionally emphasized upon the links between used rituals and the resulting healing to strengthen the ties between their gacchas and particular castes and clans. The ritualism of Jains and aspects of healing associated with it at times seems to be ambiguous as theoretically Jainism neither favoured miracles nor approved use of rituals for such purposes. Yet while considering ideological moorings of any individual, sect or institution either religious or secular, one has to remember that it never totally reflects into the empirical reality. Rather incorporation of many such beliefs and practices was intended to define and strengthen the bonds and influence of the Jain ascetics and sects. - The Editor
