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The interaction of Sanskrit through Jainism
(You tell me that eight karmas will be eradicated by the love placed on you and at the same time you also tell that if the same love is placed on another object, the eight karmas cannot be removed. Therefore I pray you, the lord, who sits under the pinți tree which is lowered with the swaying flower garlands made of honey dropping blossoms surrounded by bees.)
In the above verse one can see how Civakan is trying to realise the necessity of getting rid of karmas, by praising the lord Arhat who has got rid of his karmas,
Most of the prayers we find in the Cc. are prayers which extol the glories and qualities of freed souls. According to Jainism the freed souls are of two kinds, the disembodied and the embodied souls. The disembodied souls are called Siddhas and the embodied souls are called Arhats or Jinas. The Siddhas are of two kinds, the Tirthankara Siddhas and the Samanya Siddhas. Tirthankara Siddhas are the Siddhas who preached the doctrine of Jainism to the people in their embodied condition after shedding their karmas. The others are Samanya Siddhas. The Arhats or Jinas are souls who are embodied though they have attained perfection. They are called Arhats as they are worthy of adoration and worship1 and called Jina as they had overcome all the five senses and the eight karmas. Jina is also called a Tirthankara, because, he by preaching the Jaina doctrine helps the human beings to cross the ocean of samsara. Since these souls have human body, the human beings find it easy to worship them. Siddhas who are without any human body can be understood only by yogic contemplation. To perform yogic contemplation the individual must be fit and spiritually qualified.
Apart from Siddhas and Arhats, there are other saints and ascetics who are in their embodied state, but respected and worshipped. They are the Acaryas, the head. of the saints, the Upadhyaya, the teaching saint, and the Sadhu, an ascetic.
These five souls, the Siddha, the Arhat, the Acarya, the Upädyāya and the Sadhu are called Pancaparamesthin. The prayer made to these five classes of people are called Panca-namaskara or Pañca-parameşthi-stuti. It runs as follows:
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namo arihantanam, namo siddhāṇam, namo ayariyaṇam, namo uvajjhayanam, namo loe savvasahinam 5
(I bow to the Arhats, I bow to the Siddhas, I bow to the Acaryas, I bow to the teaching saints, 1 bow to all the Sadhus in the world-)
This Pañca-namaskara mantra is mentioned in a few places in the amalaiyar ilampakam, the dog which was beaten by the angry brahmins a deva when Civaka pronounced Pancanamaskara mantra in its ears.
2-3 Ibid, p. cxv
4 J. Jaini, op. cit. pp. 2, 80
5 Williams,
P. 185
1 A. Chakravarti, Introduction to Samayasara, Jñanapitha Moorti Devi Granthamala, English series, I, First edition, 1950, p. cxv.
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6 Cc. vv. 945-947
7 Ibid, v. 945
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