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SVASTI -Essays in Honour of Prof. Hampa Nagarajaiah
practices. Going on pilgrimage was one of the most visible and material means of expressing support to these various monastic orders. Indeed, their success very much depended on where they could receive a regular hospitality of their clients in order to further build temples and institute cults of more Jaina deities.
Shravana Belgola - The making of an ideal pilgrimage We now turn to take a close look at one of the most well known Jaina tīrthas that not only has a long recorded history but is also one site from where a great abundance of inscriptional data had been collected especially on the number of nuns and monks who offered sallekhanā or self-mortification at this place and thereby, upheld the important Jaina doctrine of renunciation. This is the site of Shravana Belgola near Mysore, in the present-day State of Karnataka. This example enables us to see how the idea of pilgrimage developed in Jainism given the changing socio-economic context in which the religion was also transforming. However, most importantly, at the same time, its main tenets of belief and the ultimate aim of how salvation should be attained were constantly interrogated and re-formulated by preachers, teachers, and seekers of salvation who flocked to this site from very early times. This also gives us a valuable insight into how, over a period of time, the followers of Jainism sanctified the earlier memory of the ascetics and monks who had visited this site but had preferred to remain anonymous. Thus, gradually at this site we are able to study the initiation of certain practices into Jainism that involved both collective and individual ritual and this, in turn, fostered the growth of pilgrimage as a mode of being a devout follower. That this tirtha was a Digambara centre also makes this a unique case study because usually the settling down of monks and ācāryas is emphasized upon in the Svetāmbara sects. Shravana Belgola is located in the Hassan District of Karnataka State and covers a topographical area of about 5 square kilometers. It has a continuous history of about 1500 years and is the foremost Digambara Jaina centre in India, revealing for the historian and the scholar the largest number of Jaina records at one place. Besides having the tallest colossus in the country of Gommateśvara it is also a place that has the largest number of Jaina Digambara temples concentrated at one place. Last but not least, it has the highest number of nișidhis or commemorative monuments located here which is how the recorded history of the place first began. Settar whose study Inviting Deathas provides us with the above details has further analyzed that the Hill at Shravana Belogola at first, simply "invited the devout to death”. Only later, he informs us, did it begin to attract pious pilgrims to this place who were initially awe struck by the severe austerities being done by the monks. It was still later that the place began to attract prosperous patrons who began to shower resources for the construction of temples and pavilions. The natural barren rock formations thus gradually began to be
25 Historical Experiments on Sepulchral Hill, Institute of Indian Art History, Karnatak University, Dharwad, 1986.
