Prof. Dr. Lawrence A. Babb
The end of the year 1990 was a troubled time in Jaipur. In many north Indian cities the autumn months had been marred by agitations against the national government's decision to implement a far-reaching policy of job reservations for lower castes. In Rajasthan these same months had seen a lengthy and exasperating bus strike. Then, in late October, there were deadly communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Jaipur provoked by the efforts of Hindu nationalists to demolish a mosque in Ayodhya, one supposedly built on the site of Lord Rama's [1] birth, and to replace it with a Hindu temple. By December, Jaipur was still a very uneasy city, and for this reason the Jain festival of Paus Dasmi was not celebrated with the usual éclat.
Paus Dasmi is an annual festival celebrated by Svetambar Jains in commemoration of the birth date of Parsvanath. Parsvanath is the twenty-third Tirthankar of our region of the cosmos and era, and is one of the most greatly revered of the Tirthankars. He was born on the tenth day (Dasmi) of the dark fortnight of the lunar month of Paus (December/January), which is why the festival is called Paus Dasmi. In 1990 this day occurred on December 11. In Jaipur this festival is normally the occasion for a major public display of religious symbols. In ordinary years, on the day before Paus Dasmi a portable image of the Tirthankar is taken in public procession from a large temple in Jaipur's walled city to a temple complex at a place called Mohan Bari on Galta Road.[2] There, on the morning of the birthday itself, the image is worshiped, and then on the afternoon of the same day the image is returned to its original temple in another public procession. But in December of 1990 this was not to be. Because of the city's troubles, no permit for the procession could be obtained. Still, at least the basic rite of worship could be performed, and it is this performance that is described in what follows. It was perhaps fortunate for me that it was celebrated in a relatively small way, for this gave me a chance to observe its performance with special closeness.
The rite is an example of a type of congregational worship commonly known as mahapuja, a "great" or "major" (maha) "rite of worship" (puja). Such rites, which come in several varieties, are commonly performed by Svetambar Jains on special occasions in both Ahmedabad and Jaipur. Most of them are directed at the Tirthankars, but I once witnessed a mahapuja for the goddess Padmavati (a guardian deity, not a Tirthankar) in Ahmedabad, and the congregational worship of certain deceased ascetics who are not Tirthankars, figures known as Dadagurus, is central to Svetambar Jainism in Jaipur. The occasions for these rites are quite various. Sometimes, as in the present case, they are performed in conjunction with calendrical festivals. The consecration anniversaries of temples are celebrated by means of these rites, and they are sometimes held to inaugurate new dwellings or businesses. Congregational worship of the Dadagurus is often held in fulfillment of a vow (see Chapter Three). A rite called the antaraynivaranpuja (the puja to "remove obstructive karmas ") is frequently performed on the thirteenth day after a death.
The specific rite to be discussed here belongs to a class of rites known as pañc kalyanakpujas. The expression pañc kalyanak means "five welfare-producing events," and refers to five events that are definitive of the lives of the Tirthankars. Although the Tirthankars have different individual biographies, the truly significant events in the lifetime of each and every Tirthankar are exactly five in number and are always precisely the same.[3] They are: 1) the descent of the Tirthankar-to-be into a human womb (cyavan),[4] 2) his birth (janam), 3) his initiation as an ascetic (diksa), 4) his attainment of omniscience (kevaljnan), and 5) his final liberation (nirvan). A pañc kalyanakpuja is a rite of worship celebrating the five welfare-producing events - the five kalyanaks - in the life of a particular Tirthankar.[5] Five-kalyanakpujas are very important as a class of rites, a fact that reflects the importance of the kalyanaks as cosmic events. Five-kalyanakpujas are often performed as part of the ceremony that empowers the images in Jain temples, and this suggests that the Tirthankars' kalyanaks have left a residue of welfare (kalyan) in the cosmos that can be focused in images and mobilized by rituals in the service of worshipers.
Every major Jain rite of worship is based on a specific text that carries its distinctive story line or rationale. In the case of a pañc Kalyanak puja of the sort to be described here, the story line recounts the five kalyanaks as the key episodes in the biography of a specific Tirthankar. Such texts are always authored by ascetics. The text of the present rite was written by a Khartar Gacch monk named Kavindrasagar (1905-1960) whose chief works include a number of well known pujas. The type of Hindi in which the text is written is easy for participants to understand.
The particular rite performed on Paus Dasmi celebrates the five kalyanaks of Parsvanath. It is, accordingly, called the parsvanathpanc kalyanakpuja, and its story line is an account of the five kalyanaks as they occurred in Parsvanath's own particular career. Participants sing songs from the text that recount and praise each of Parsvanath's five kalyanaks, and at the conclusion of each set of songs certain prescribed ritual acts occur.[6] Sometimes favorite devotional songs not in the text are added. The rite thus consists of five separate groups of ritual acts, each preceded by a group of songs. It should be understood that most participants in such rites are at least minimally conversant with these songs, and some will know some of them or parts of them by heart. The text is as central to the rite as the ritual acts that accompany its singing. The ritual acts (to be described below) are completely standard in the sense that more or less the same ones occur in all rites of this sort. It is the text that embeds the ritual acts in a narrative that differentiates the significance of one type of rite (in this case the parsvanathpañc kalyanakpuja) from others.
The spirit in which the songs are sung is also very important. The rite is seen as an expression of devotion (bhakti). For a rite of this sort to be successful, the songs should be sung with gusto and feeling; they should express, that is, the proper spirit (bhav). Typically, rites of this kind start slowly with a limited number of participants. As time passes, more participants arrive, and at the end - if all is well - the site of the ceremony will be packed with lustily singing devotees. In the case of the particular rite described here, the troubled context kept attendance down, but the singing was spirited.
The ritual acts are the responsibility of a limited number of individuals who are bathed and wearing clothing appropriate for touching sacred images (see Chapter Two). These I call "puja principals." They stand, often in husband-wife pairs, holding a platter containing offerings while the songs appropriate to a given segment of the rite are sung; when the appropriate moment comes they perform the required actions
Figure 1.
A puja principal holding offerings in Jaipur. Note the mouth-cloth designed to prevent impurities from being breathed on the image.
(see Figure 1). Because of the troubled atmosphere in the city, in this case the temple's pujari (ritual assistant) was the sole puja principal; normally there would have been several drawn from the city's lay community. The other participants serve as both singers and as a sort of audience (though they are not pure spectators). Remaining seated, they sing the puja's verses and witness the puja principals' acts. In the case in question about a hundred participants of this sort were on the scene by the ceremony's end.
We thus see that the role of worshiper is actually manifested in two ways in rites of this sort. The puja principals are in physical contact with the image; others are at an audience-like distance. In a sense the puja principals "do," while the others felicitate what is "being done." Jains believe that one's approval (anumodan) of another's good deed is spiritually and karmically beneficial, and the division of ritual labor seems to capitalize on this concept; by means of vocal participation an indefinite number of individuals can partake of the benefits of the rite.[7] Svetambar Jain ritual culture is of the do-it-yourself sort; there is no role for priestly mediators, and this would seem to inhibit any sort of congregationalism. We see, however, that the differentiation of the worshiper's role into two modes allows for a strong congregational emphasis.
What follows is an abstracted account of the rite as I saw it performed in 1990 with a special emphasis on the text. The focus of worship was a small metal image of the Tirthankar and a metal disc on which the siddhcakra had been inscribed.[8] These items were placed atop a stand that was stationed at the entrance to the main shrine at Mohan Bari. Participants sat in the temple's courtyard, with men to one side and women to the other (the standard arrangement). In front of this stand with the image was a low table on which five small flags had been placed in a row. Svastiks (executed in sandalwood paste) marked the positions at the foot of each flag where offerings were deposited as the ceremony progressed.
