Book Title: Tulsi Prajna 2008 07
Author(s): Shanta Jain, Jagatram Bhattacharya
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

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Page 40
________________ not the ethical part. These particular rituals occurred, rather came to be practiced, in human history in different paryāya and continues to đãy as events in narrative history of mankind and as rituals in different religious cultures. 2. In Hindu religion it is upanayana. A boy belonging to one of the upper three castes (some insist only the brahmin caste) ceremonially wears a thread of cotton across the shoulder. (A Śūdra is given to wear a bangle in his upper arm). He is kept confined in a room where only an earthen lamp burns, where none except the mother can enter. In the Atharvaveda it is said that the priest (purohit), as if, holds the boy in his belly. In zoroastrianism it is naojot. The boy or girl ceremonially wear kusti – a thread of lambwool round the waist and sudreh-a vest. As the boy or girl proceeds towards the arena of the ceremony an egg is broken behind them. (They do it in marriage and other ceremonies also. In eastern part of Bengal, now Bangladesh, when the Hindu bride would enter the house of the groom she is ceremonially received and an egg is thrown over her shoulders). In Judaism it is circumcision - the mark of covenant with God. In Christianity they call it Baptism, replacing the old semetic custom of circumcision, introduced by John the Baptist. They say, it is circumcision of the heart. Holy water is sprinkled on the child with a chant to say, you are drowned and dead in the holy river Jordan, and again holy water in sprinkled with a chant, you are now resurrected with Jesus. In Islam it is the old semetic circumcission. In Melanesian countrie off a small bit of the left little finger or a small bit from the ear, among some central African tribe it is circumcission. The Neur tribes of southern Sudan, as Evans Pritchard saw it, make a cut along the eyebrows. Instances can be multiplied, These rituals have little similarity with each other religious conflicts center around these rituals. But observations or polylogue revealed one characteristic common to them all. They all mean, by different words, that at a certain age the boy is taken into the fold of the community in the name of god. It is initiation by different varied rituals. It is revealed by polylogue or observation that members of a religious community observe different types of rituals - birth rituals, initiation rituals, puberty rituals (for girls), marriage rituals, death rituals, etc. With all their differences by these rituals mankind remain one, as these are called by one word “rites of passage” (van Genep). It is both a descriptive and explanatory term. Human Society is like a building with rooms and corridors. One room signifies a particular structure of life. 34 greit sgt sich 140 Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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