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64: śramaņa, Vol 64, No. 1, Jan.-Mar. 2013 but, rather, members of the Jain laity ask them to accept the food. Thus, according to Jain ideology, no desire is connected with the food, and, therefore, no accumulation of sin (pāpa) occurs. The sin (pāpa) of the giver is “destroyed, not just transferred” in the process of this Jain giving." The personas of the Jain pontiffs particularly of the Tapā Gaccha ācārya Hīravijaya Sūri and Khartar Gaccha ācārya Jīnacandra Sūrī (both contemporaries of Mughal Emperor Akbar) have also been seen as carrying the healing properties. The Jain hagiographical narratives have celebrated peoples' conversion to the Jain fold or their shunning of violence or adorning vegetarianism as symbol of healing. The Jain Guru's magical abilities have been directly associated with asceticism; their powers, for example, are called yogabala (power of yoga), or tapobala (power of asceticism). These magical powers, in turn, are connected directly with the worldly well-being of those whom the Dādāgurus assist; indeed this is the entire reason for being of their cult. While worship of the Tīrtharkaras tends to be rationalized as an act of renunciation (tyāga), the Dādāgurus' worship was based on the desire for miraculous intervention in one's worldly affair. In fact, almost all of the medieval Jain pontiffs enjoyed their part of glory on the basis of the number of images they consecrated themselves. Now one tends to cite some examples from Jain hagiographical traditions. According to the Prabandhacintāmaņi of Merutunga, completed in early 1305 A.D., the twelfth-century Cālukya emperor Jayasimha Siddharāja was desirous of enlightenment and liberation. He questioned teachers from all the various traditions, but remained in a quandary when he discovered that they all promoted their own teachings while disparaging other teachings. Among the teachers he questioned was the great Śvetāmbara mendicant Hemacandra, known as the Omniscient One of the Kali Yuga (kalikālasarvajña). Rather than promote Jainism (which Hemacandra on other occasions was more than willing to do he assisted Vādidevasūrī in defeating the Digambara Kumudacandra and later convinced Jayasimha's
