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Aloka Parasher-Sen, Renunciation and Pilgrimage in Jainism
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shall be to put them in the context of a local or micro-level situation. This has to be closely analyzed since it poignantly reveals how such local tirthas received financial and material support from the larger group of the Jaina laity. Without periods and regions of prosperity, the sanctity of such centres is short lived. Thus, in our ultimate analysis we wish to highlight that faith and economic support go together. Renunciation -- Jaina beliefs and practices The core of Jaina doctrine was centered on the idea that the blissful, bright and allknowing soul is present in every jīva and ajīva entity. These entities enveloped not only human, animal, and plant life but stones, rocks and running water as well. However, the existence of this soul is understood to get clouded and dull by karmic action and matter which is born as a result of an unending cycle of transmigration. The main focus of attention in Jaina belief is therefore, the annihilation of this karma. It was believed that this could be done through penance. This, in turn, required a long course of fasting, self-mortification, study and meditation that was ideally to be done by the most rigorous means so that fresh karma could not enter the soul. In simple words, by a carefully disciplined conduct the dangerous qualities of karma could be prevented from entering the soul so that it could be set free. This simple and clear Jaina teaching remained unaltered even though Jaina philosophers developed with great subtlety many other aspects of their doctrines and epistemology in general at a later period. The early Jainas recognized however, that full salvation for the layman was not possible. To attain kevala and mukti one had to necessarily abandon all aspects of luxurious life including the clothes one was wearing. The rigorous penance could therefore, not be followed by the lay folk. Further, it was also recognized that monastic life was essential for salvation but since the Universe was fast declining very few souls could indeed achieve spiritual liberation in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, some popular Jaina stories on how members of families, wives and children in particular, were effected by the resolutions of renunciation undertaken by those who wished to go in search of truth, were popularized as an ideal for all to respect. Though the stories revealed from time to time that social ties, friendships, emotional bonds between man and wife, mother and child, father and son and so on, were painful and often generated anger and helplessness, these narratives were so written that they went beyond the single life of an individual to show the ultimate efficacy of the decision of renunciation being the only goal. In other respects of the Jaina teaching too a lay follower of Jainism found it difficult to even take up the profession of agriculture since it involved the destruction of plant life and many other
7 Several of these stories have been put together as an anthology in Phyllis Granoff (Selected, Translated and with an Introduction) The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden, An Anthology of Medieval Jain Stories, Penguin Classics, 1998.
