Prof. Dr. Lawrence A. Babb
Although worshipers of the Tirthankars do not recover food offerings as prasad, they do utilize the residual water left from the bathing of the Tirthankar's image. This presents us with a puzzle. When worshipers recover small amounts of this liquid and apply it to their bodies, this seems to express a reciprocal relationship in which sacred power is being transmitted from the image to the worshiper. That power is involved is shown clearly by the belief that the image's bathwater has healing properties. In illness or injury it can be applied directly to the afflicted parts of the body with beneficial results. Similar power can be carried by the detritus that is cleaned from the images in the morning. This raises two general questions. The first is that of how the water can be power-charged if there is no transaction with the Tirthankar. The second is the more basic question of how ritual can be materially efficacious at all.
Jains believe that worship can indeed produce good worldly results, but the mechanism by means of which this is done is always a cloudy matter. Various kinds of explanation, each plausible in its own way, free-float around the issue.[1] Most Jains agree that good results cannot come from the Tirthankar himself. one friend in Ahmedabad, however, opined that the power does indeed come from the Tirthankars; it descends from above, he said, as a gentle rain of compassion with the temple's flag acting as an antenna.[2]
It is also clear that the images themselves, quite apart from the beings they represent, can be repositories of power. This is shown by the fact that some images are regarded as more powerful than others.[3] A particular image's power may be related to its history - how it was created, or how it was discovered, for many images are believed to have been miraculously recovered from burial. An image's power is also associated with the mantra (power-charged utterance) pronounced by the officiating ascetic at the time of the image's consecration. Jains sometimes say that an image's power is proportional to the spiritual attainments of the ascetic who performed the consecration. Much like the charge of a battery, the mantra -induced power can dissipate over time and can be replenished by ritual means. Such power does indeed have links to the Tirthankar, but only indirectly through the line of disciplic succession that connects the officiating ascetic to him over the gulf of intervening ages.
In any case, the water recovered from a Tirthankar's worship can indeed transmit sacred power to the recipient. But it is highly significant that even though it transmits sacred power, the liquid taken from a Tirthankar's altar should not be drunk.[4] This restriction contrasts with the corresponding Hindu practice in which devotees do indeed consume the bathwater and bodily detritus of deities, and it goes directly to the heart of a basic tension in Jain ritual culture.
Applying such substances to one's body is an expression of respectful and loving intimacy with the Tirthankar's image. In the eightfold worship the context of this act is ang puja, a phase of the rite that emphasizes humble bodily service. Taking materials used in such services on one's own body intensifies and extends the intimacy and is a further expression of homage. Because of their close contact with the images, such materials can also transmit beneficial power from image to worshiper. But there is a limit to the intimacy, for there can be no consubstantiation between worshiper and Tirthankar in Jain ritual culture. The prohibition of eating or drinking anything taken from the Tirthankar's worship seems to obviate the notion that one could express or achieve any sort of "union" with a Tirthankar by internalizing his emanations. The Tirthankar is not present in the image, and in any case union with such a being is neither possible nor sought. What then remains as a ritual possibility is emulation, not connection - at most an intimacy of surfaces (as opposed to alimentary intimacy) with an empowered Tirthankar image (as opposed to the Tirthankar himself).
A Digamber acquaintance offered a similar explanation. He said that the Tirthankar's omniscient state attracts a vast inward flow of merit ( punya). But because the merit does not adhere to the Tirthankar, it becomes generally available - in fact for hundreds of yojans around. His implication was that worship somehow taps into this flow.
