YJA Convention 1994 07 Chicago IL First

Author(s): Young Jains of America (YJA)
Publisher: Young Jains of America YJA USA

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Jina in ancient times.
oriented towards the hope of divine intervention, virtually unnecessary in a Jain temple. Hence the Jain community has for the most part never developed a special priestly caste analogous to that of the Brahmans in Hinduism. Laymen are encouraged to carry out ritual services on their own, either individually or in a group.
Shvetambars in particular have been loath to give over the performance of ceremonial functions to a caste of specialists; they may delegate to certain individuals the regular responsibility for cleaning the temple and washing and decorating the images, but such people are by no means priests. Among Digambars in the north, a similar situation has prevailed. But those in the south have developed a class of so-called "Jain-Brahmans"; members of this group were permanently attached to temples or temple lands, and were usually entrusted with the actual performance of rituals held within their domain. The presence of Jain-Brahmans was of course intimately connected with worship of the "guardian spirits" and various yaksas (demigods) who could be "reached" by means of complex religious procedures. But even where such ceremonial specialists did exist within Jainism, they never assured the sacred status or exclusive sway over religious functions accorded Brahmans in the Hindu community. An ordinary lay person was always free, provided he had taken the mulagunas and sanctified himself with a ritual bath, to perform puja in any Jain temple; this held true even if a Jain-Brahman was "in charge" there.
The Great ceremony of the Five Auspicious occasions The visualization rationale discussed above is carried still further by the important temple ritual which, using an image as its "central character", re-enacts the five auspicious events (panca-kalyana) in the life of a Tirthankar (conception, birth, renunciation, attainment of omniscience, and nirvana). This ceremony is not a daily or regularly scheduled one; it is ordinarily performed only when a new image or set of images is to be installed. Thus it not only provides a "vision of the Jina" (the kind of symbolic "encounter" discussed above) for the lay participants, but it also serves to sanctify the new icons. Jains believe that erecting a Jina-image is the noblest of worldly activities; one who commissions the building of such an image, as well as its proper consecration by performance of the "great ceremony of the five auspicious occasions" (panch-kalyan-mahotsav), is considered very likely to be born in a world blessed with a living Tirthankar.
The Jain temple is perhaps most accurately viewed as a replica of the samavarasana (holy assembly of the Tirthankars). The laymen comes near as though he were actually approaching the spot where a living Jina sits immobile, bathed in omniscient glory, "preaching" by means of the miraculous sound emanating from his body. The Jina-image itself is used as a tangible aid to visualization of such a sacred being; there by one can hope to awaken his soul's potential for samayak-darsana, as so often supposedly happened to those fortunate enough to have encountered a real
The ceremony itself strikes the outsider as a sort of stylized dramatic production. The person who has requested (and financed) this event takes the part of Sakra (Indra), king of Gods; he is accompanied by his wife in the role of Indrani, Sakra's consort, who is thought to come to earth to greet the birth of each Jinato-be. Certain members of his family play the parents of the illustrious baby. The "mother" witnesses the sixteen auspicious dream images which portend so extraordinary a conception; artistic representations of these images (see Chapter I) are displayed within the temple. During the "birth" phase (janam-kalyana), "Sakra" places the Jina-image atop a five-tiered pedestal, silver in color, which symbolizes Mount Meru, the center of the Jain universe. Local women close to the family that commissioned the ceremony then gather water from four different wells, signifying the waters drawn by the Gods from the various oceans described in Jain Cosmology; the "baby Jina" is sprinkled with the holy liquid. The sequence of the actions in this and certain other stages
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