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Andrea Luithle-Hardenberg, The “99fold” pilgrimage to Shatrunjaya
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However, by taking into account the experiences of young Shvetambara women in Palitana and on Shatrunjaya, we might get a better clue of the Jaina youth's aspirations, skills and perspectives.
Shatrunjaya In order to approach the subject we first have to address Shatrunjaya's crucial importance for the Shvetambara community. Today, among the supra-regional pilgrimage centers of the Murtipujak Shvetambara, the holy mountain Shatrunjaya together with the adjacent pilgrimage town of Palitana, is the most significant in both ritual and social terms. According to the estimation of an officer employed by the managing trust, Anandji Kalyanji Pedhi, every year at least 400,000 pilgrims undertake the pilgrimage to the holy mountain in order to worship Adishvar, the way Adinath or Rshabha, the first fordmaker, is called locally. In accordance with the traditional obligation for pilgrimage (tirtha yatra) as enlisted within the eleven duties for the lay person, many Shvetambaras come regularly, even several times a year. In no other place one encounters such a concentration of Shvetambara temples of great importance and nowhere else are so many pilgrim hostels established which reflect the plurality of local Shvetambara communities. Elsewhere I therefore argue that the pilgrimage to Shatrunjaya is a central aspect in the construction of a distinct Shvetambara identity. What, however, does this mean for the younger generation, especially for the young people who live in metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Bengalaru, Kolkata or Chennai, which are at least a day's journey away? In fact, most of the Shvetambara youngsters of today belong to the middle or upper classes of these and some other urban centers. We would rightly expect them to attend a business school or a university class rather than a sermon of an Acarya and we are more likely to meet them in cyber cafés or shopping malls than in a temple. These youngsters wear fashionable clothes, communicate mainly in English and watch American TV serials or cosmopolitan music programs like MTV. On first sight they do not seem to be interested in establishing a lasting connection with their respective local Jaina community. Nevertheless, during my fieldwork I had the opportunity to observe and interview several Shvetambara girls and boys in their late teens or early twenties who took part in the so called “99fold” pilgrimage (navanu) to Shatrunjaya. These repeated pilgrimages are accompanied by extraordinary ascetic practices, which are continued over a period of two months. Thus, within the Shvetambara community a lot of people refer to navanu as the hardest austerity a lay person can take on, even harder than
3 Williams (1991[1963]: 233–34). * Luithle-Hardenberg (in print); for a summary of the main argument see Luithle-Hardenberg (2010).
