The Jain 1992 04 Special Issue

Author(s): Natubhai Shah, Vinod Kapashi
Publisher: UK Jain Samaj Europe

Page 18

- din
RITUALS
Lay members of the community will perform this service in the course of their devotions, bathing and anointing the image and making the ritual offerings before it. Often, however, the temple will employ a pujari whose particular function will be to carry out the necessary allention to the sacred image, performing the full rituals as required each day. The pujari may be a Jain, but often is not; he may be a brahmin but is as likely to be a member of another caste, sometimes of quite low status. He may lead the prayers and invocations on other ritual occasions. But, although the pujari performs functions which some might regard as priestly, his position is no more than that of a temple servant. Among the Digambaras there is the institution of the bhattaraka who is perhaps rather closer to a priest as envisaged in the Christian churches. Owing to the extremely demanding nature of the Digambara monastic discipline the call to the mendicant life is answered by very few : there are around 150 to 200 Digambara monks only. Hence the position of spiritual leader is taken by the bhattaraka who is a respected and often learned man, although still strictly a layman. But, among the Digambaras as among the Svetambaras, the bhattaraka is no more essential to the rituals than the pujari or the monk and is no exception to the fact that the Jains do not have priests.
As might be expected, there is not complete uniformity of rituals across all Jain sects, schools and communities. The rituals as described here represent the norms of practice among the image-worshipping (deravasi or murtipujaka) Jains of the Svetambara division of Jainism. They are, of course, very different from the devotions of the Sthanakvasis, who worship without images in a simple upasraya or prayer hall, or the Terapanthis who also do not worship images. In the Digambara sect the bases of the rituals are the same but with considerable detailed differences. There are also Digambaras who do not worship before images. In addition to the sectarian differences the various rituals may undergo other lesser changes according to local custom. An individual worshipper may introduce some variations in his or her private devotions, whether deliberately or not. Although they have, naturally, undergone change over the centuries, these rituals are extremely old. They incorporate many prayers and invocations which antedate, in many cases probably by very many hundreds of years, the setting down of the present formal ritual structure. It should be remembered that the Jains have no priests. Monks and nuns have an important role as religious teachers for the laity. They are the objects of respect and veneration in the rituals and play an important part in, to take one example, the consecration of sacred images. They perform the daily and periodic rites for themselves, with due modification for their possessionless state : indeed the ancient texts see the devotions of the sravaka or sravika (the male or female lay person) often as an entering for a limited period of time into the monastic state. But, although very important in the religious life of the Jain Community, the monks and nuns are in no, sense priests. They do not act as intercessors or mediators between the laity and the divinity, they have no part in the administration of the temple (indeed, their peripatetic life would in any case preclude this), with rare exceptions their presence is not essential in the rituals, they are worthy objects, not dispensers, of charity, and their important role as spiritual teachers is always subordinate to their prime concern of their own spiritual advancement. Thus the rituals are in practice to a very great extent the rituals of the laity. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, even, indeed, the brahmin priestly caste, has no direct counterpart in Jainism. There are certain ritual functions which are not infrequently delegated to specialists. A temple which holds a consecrated image of the fina will need to make provision for the daily ritual veneration of the consecrated image which is an essential requirement.
One further point is worth mentioning. The Jain rituals are essentially the framework for the personal devotions of the individual. The daily rituals envisage the solitary worshipper performing his or her devotions whether in the temple or before the image of the Tirthankara which is a normal feature of a Jain home. This does not mean that the rituals are not also performed congregationally : they may be carried out by a small group or by a large congregation. Congregational worship often takes the form of the singing of stavans or hymns in the vernacular, interspersed often by the chanting of the Prakrit prayers. The celebration of one of the great festivals may well involve the whole community and can open with the Namokkara Mantra, proceed with hymns, devotional singing and dancing, celebrating events in the life of a Tirthankara, and end with the aarati ritual of lights. A celebration of this nature will incorporate ritual elements but it is supplementary to the formal rituals which constitute the recommended, or essential, daily or periodic religious exercises of the pious Jain. Women, as well as men, perform the rituals in the home or in the temple (unless menstruating, a taboo which is observed in many other religious traditions), indeed the devotee seen in the temple is more likely to be a woman than a man. Although the traditional norms of Indian society do still operate to some extent in the Jain community, women play a large part in religious and ritual life.
18 Jain Education International 2010_03