Absent Lord: Deities as Models

The snatra puja illustrates with particular clarity and explicitness a principle vital to understanding Jainism as a ritual culture and as a lived tradition: When human beings engage in acts of worship, they take on the roles of gods and goddesses. Moreover, Indras and Indranis, the kings and queens of the gods, are the principal figures emulated by human worshipers. In many important pujas worshipers wear tinsel crowns to symbolize this identity (Figure 8).^[1]

We see, therefore, that in the redemptive economy of the Jain cosmos the deities' role is not to serve as objects of worship, but to serve as the tradition's archetypal worshipers. They are not ascetics, and (as we know) ascetics alone are true objects of worship to the Jains. Instead, they are lay Jains who project an ideal image of what lay Jains must do as ones who worship ascetics. As an Ahmedabad friend once put it to me, the deities are really "like our brothers and sisters" in the sense that they, too, worship the Tithankars. This role is reiterated whenever the five kalyanaks occur. On infinite occasions through infinite time the gods and goddesses have come forward to be the prime admirers and supporters of those who are truly worthy of worship, the Tithankars. This is the paradigm for the worshiper's role in Jainism.

It is true that certain Jain deities are offered a type of worship, but this illustrates the more general principle that only ascetics are truly worthy of worship. Jains believe that some gods and goddesses will respond to prayers, as Tirthankars do not and cannot, with worldly boons. The ancillary deities (adhisthayak devs) of the Tirthankars serve this function, and some (such as Padmavati and Cakresvari) have cults of their own. The guardian deities of temples (called ksetrapals) are also believed to come to the aid of worshipers, and some of these have likewise become important deities in their own right. But they are never truly independent objects of worship, and their worship is seen as a kind of postscript to the worship of the Tirthankars. Jains say that all such deities come to the aid of human beings because of their approval of piety directed, not toward them, but toward the Tirthankars.

Figure 8.
A crowned worshiper in Ahmedabad

A good example of such a deity is Nakora Bhairav, who is the guardian deity of Parsvanath's image at a famous temple complex at Nakora (near Balotra in western Rajasthan). This god is reputed to be extremely powerful, and has a very large following in Jaipur where his image is commonly installed in temples and household shrines. Many businessmen consider him to be a business partner and pledge a certain percentage of their profits to him.^[2] Most pilgrims who go to Nakora do so to worship Bhairav in order to seek his aid in worldly matters. When I was present, the sums paid^[3] for the privilege of performing rites for Bhairav were considerably higher than for the Tirthankar. Nonetheless, it is Parsvanath, not Bhairav, who is - in theory - the principal object of worship at this temple, and Bhairav is seen as his worshiper and protector. It is significant that the promotional brochures distributed by the temple's Trust give only passing mention to Nakora's main claim to fame, which is Nakora Bhairav, stressing instead the images of the Tirthankars, the quality of the artwork, and so on.^[4] This illustrates the more general principle that from the standpoint of the tradition's dominant values - values which the authors of the brochure are willing to articulate in print - the seeking of worldly boons is an awkward feature of the situation that needs to be minimized, and that, in any case, it is the Tirthankars, not deities like Bhairav, who are the real objects of worship. Bhairav is really a lay Jain who, out of fellow feeling, will come to the aid of other pious lay Jains.

The theme of identification between worshipers and deities is familiar to students of the ancient Vedic sacrifice; in these rites the sacrificer is divinized. From Brian K. Smith (I989: 104-12; see also E M. Smith 1987:20) we learn that during the course of the sacrifice the sacrificer attains a divine self (daiva atman), a "godlike status within the ritual," and goes on a "journey" to heaven (svarga loka). This is, however, only a temporary condition, for the worshiper must return to his mortal existence with the conclusion of the rite. For the sacrificer a permanent sojourn in heaven comes only after the present life; in the ritual he is in heaven "just long enough to mark out and reserve a space for the next life" (ibid.: 109). The Jain rite of worship (puja) is seen as a form of sacrifice, the one form of sacrifice acceptable to Jains, and is often referred to as ijya or yajna (Williams: 216). The identity between worshipers and the denizens of heaven in Jain ritual may thus have an ancient pedigree. However, in Jainism the ideological and symbolic surround is very different. For the Vedic sacrificer the heavenly realm, attained completely only after death, was a fully legitimate goal. For the Jains it is not. The worshiper may indeed become a deity after death, but such felicity is finally declared to be a kind of spiritual fool's gold. The wise ritualist aims not at heaven but at liberation beyond heaven.

It is significant, therefore, that the snatra puja does not glorify the roles of the gods and goddesses. It is the Tirthankar, and not even mighty Indra, who is the actual object of worship. The Tirthankar stands for ascetic values, not for the felicity that the deities embody. The true goal of asceticism is not the world's delights but a state of being beyond all delights and sorrows. A subtext of this and similar rites is that worshipers prosper in the same way the deities do (and can indeed someday become deities) as a consequence of worship. But as we shall see later, so decisively is asceticism asserted as the transcendent value that there is a strong tendency in the tradition to interpret human acts of worship as ascetic acts.

Deities and ascetics are therefore opposed, and their opposition reflects a basic contrast between two unequally valued modes of religious practice. This choice, in turn, is embedded in Jainism's conception of how Jain teachings enter history. This brings us to the crucial matter of kingship.