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Rituals and Healing: The Case of....: 61 everyday basis was based on the axis of philosophy and rituals of the religious community. The philosophical virtues like non-violence, forbearance, simplicity and straightforwardness were taught and practiced through performance of certain everyday rituals. The daily and other practices and rituals known as kryās or caryas were actually performed or followed by typical lay followers of the religion. It is important to notice that rituals played a unique role for constructing the Jain identity and formation of Jain community in medieval India.
Unlike other religions, Jainism has no priesthood. Though ascetics have an important role as religious teachers for lay people, they form in no sense priesthood. They are respected and venerated in rituals and play an important part in guiding religious activities, however, they perform their daily and periodic rituals. They do not act as intercessors or mediators between the laity and any divinities. They have no part in the administration of the temples, and indeed their peripatetic life precludes this. With rare exceptions their presence is not essential to the rituals. There are certain ritual functions which are infrequently delegated to trained or qualified specialists (vidhikāraka). A temple which holds the consecrated image of the Jina would need to make provision for the essential daily ritual, veneration of the image and lay people perform this service in the course of their devotion, bathing and anointing the image, and making the ritual offerings before it. Often, however, the temple will employ a temple servant (pujārī, but actually inferior to the usual priest) whose particular function would be to carry out duties like cleaning the temple premises and collecting other utilities required for the sacred image, apart from performing the full daily chorus. Thus in case of Jainism performance of rituals remains an activity to be performed solely between the devotee and the God without any mediator. Thus, a conduct of rituals having well led meanings and symbols becomes fundamental to explain the existence of the Jain community.
To perform the temple rituals themselves before entering the sanctum `sanctorum (vedi) in the temple, the worshipper bathes and puts on
