Jainism
Jainism - The Monastic Path
By about 500 B.C., some teachers had moved so far down the path of liberation
that they no longer viewed the standard perception of life in the social world
as valid for the dedicated spiritual devotee. They formed communities of religious
renunciants (shramanas ) who withdrew from the world and evolved a full-time
monastic discipline. The most successful of these early communities, the Jains
(or, in Sanskrit, Jaina) and the Buddhists, rejected the value of the Vedas
and created independent textual traditions based on the words and examples of
their early teachers, eventually evolving entirely new ways for interacting
with the lay community.
Jainism
The oldest continuous monastic tradition in India is Jainism, the path of the
Jinas, or victors. This tradition is traced to Var-dhamana Mahavira (The Great
Hero; ca. 599-527 B.C.), the twenty-fourth and last of the Tirthankaras (Sanskrit
for fordmakers). According to legend, Mahavira was born to a ruling family in
the town of Vaishali, located in the modern state of Bihar. At the age of thirty,
he renounced his wealthy life and devoted himself to fasting and self-mortification
in order to purify his consciousness and discover the meaning of existence.
He never again dwelt in a house, owned property, or wore clothing of any sort.
Following the example of the teacher Parshvanatha (ninth century B.C.), he attained
enlightenment and spent the rest of his life meditating and teaching a dedicated
group of disciples who formed a monastic order following rules he laid down.
His life's work complete, he entered a final fast and deliberately died of starvation.
The ancient belief system of Jainism rests on a concrete understanding of the
working of karma, its effects on the living soul (jiva ), and the conditions
for extinguishing action and the soul's release. According to the Jain view,
the soul is a living substance that combines with various kinds of nonliving
matter and through action accumulates particles of matter that adhere to it
and determine its fate. Most of the matter perceptible to human senses, including
all animals and plants, is attached in various degrees to living souls and is
in this sense alive. Any action has consequences that necessarily follow the
embodied soul, but the worst accumulations of matter come from violence against
other living beings.
The ultimate Jain discipline, therefore, rests on complete inactivity and absolute
nonviolence (ahimsa) against any living beings. Some Jain monks and nuns wear
face masks to avoid accidently inhaling small organisms, and all practicing
believers try to remain vegetarians. Extreme renunciation, including the refusal
of all food, lies at the heart of a discipline that purges the mind and body
of all desires and actions and, in the process, burns off the consequences of
actions performed in the past. In this sense, Jain renunciants may recognize
or revere deities, but they do not view the Vedas as sacred texts and instead
concentrate on the atheistic, individual quest for purification and removal
of karma. The final goal is the extinguishing of self, a "blowing out"
(nirvana) of the individual self.
Jainism :
By the first century A.D., the Jain community evolved into two main divisions
based on monastic discipline: the Digambara or "sky-clad" monks who
wear no clothes, own nothing, and collect donated food in their hands; and the
Svetambara or "white-clad" monks and nuns who wear white robes and
carry bowls for donated food. The Digambara do not accept the possibility of
women achieving liberation, while the Svetambara do. Western and southern India
have been Jain strongholds for many centuries; laypersons have typically formed
minority communities concentrated primarily in urban areas and in mercantile
occupations. In the mid-1990s, there were about 7 million Jains, the majority
of whom live in the states of Maharashtra (mostly the city of Bombay, or Mumbai
in Marathi), Rajasthan, and Gujarat (see Structure and Dynamics, ch. 2). Karnataka,
traditionally a stronghold of Digambaras, has a sizable Jain community.
The Jain laity engage in a number of ritual activities that resemble those of
the Hindus around them (see The Ceremonies of Hinduism, this ch.). Special shrines
in residences or in public temples include images of the Tirthankaras, who are
not worshiped but remembered and revered; other shrines house the gods who are
more properly invoked to intercede with worldly problems. Daily rituals may
include meditation and bathing; bathing the images; offering food, flowers,
and lighted lamps for the images; and reciting mantras in Ardhamagadhi, an ancient
language of northeast India related to Sanskrit. Many Jain laity engage in sacramental
ceremonies during life-cycle rituals, such as the first taking of solid food,
marriage, and death, resembling those enacted by Hindus. Jains may also worship
local gods and participate in local Hindu or Muslim celebrations without compromising
their fundamental devotion to the path of the Jinas. The most important festivals
of Jainism celebrate the five major events in the life of Mahavira: conception,
birth, renunciation, enlightenment, and final release at death.
At a number of pilgrimage sites associated with great teachers of Jainism, the
gifts of wealthy donors made possible the building of architectural wonders.
Shatrunjaya Hills (Siddhagiri) in Gujarat is a major Svetambara site, an entire
city of about 3,500 temples. Mount Abu in Rajasthan, with one Digambara and
five Svetambara temples, is the site of some of India's greatest architecture,
dating from the eleventh through thirteenth centuries A.D. In Karnataka, on
the hill of Sravana Belgola, stands the monolithic seventeen-meter-high statue
of the naked Bhagwan Bahubali (Gomateshvara), the first person in the world
believed by the faithful to have attained enlightenment, so deep in meditation
that vines are growing around his legs. At this site every twelve years, a major
concourse of Jain ascetics and laity participate in a purification ceremony
in which the statue is anointed from head to toe. Carved in 981, the statue
is considered the holiest Jain shrine. In addition to its lavish patronage of
shrines, the Jain community, with its long scriptural tradition and wealth gained
from trade, has always been known for its philanthropy and especially for its
support of education and learning. Prestigious Jain schools are located in most
major cities. The largest concentrations of Jains are in Maharashtra (more than
965,000) and Rajasthan (nearly 563,000), with sizable numbers also in Gujarat
and Madhya Pradesh.
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