Prof. Dr. Lawrence A. Babb
It remains to be said that the Tirthankars' example of the transformation of hero-prince into hero-ascetic cannot, as it stands, provide a symbolic foundation for the social identity of an actual Jain community. Such a community can indeed be one of ex-warrior-kings, and so the Osvals have seen themselves. However, it cannot be one of hero-ascetics for the simple reason that it must be a self-reproducing community of men and women who make their way in the world. Asceticism exercises a powerful influence on Jain conduct. Ascetic practice can be pursued as a permanent condition of life, as it is for monks and nuns. Or it can be temporary and circumscribed, as it is for the many ascetic exercises, especially those involving fasting, for which Jain lay religious custom is renowned. These practices have a deep legitimacy conferred by the tradition's bias toward the ascetic moks marg. But sustained realization of ascetic values is not an option for most lay Jains.
Still, if a Jain community cannot be a community of hero-ascetics, then there is another thing it can be: a community of ex-warrior-kings who are not themselves ascetics but who respect and worship Jain ascetics. This is indeed how Osval origin mythology portrays Osval identity.
How, then, is the identity of those who worship ascetics to be conceived? Out of what symbolic materials is it to be constructed? To take the case of the Osval Jains, such respecters and worshipers of ascetics obviously cannot be warrior-kingly on the Rajput model (or on any other), for they have shed the culture of violence.[1] Nonetheless, they can retain at least one kingly attribute, for they are supporters of holy personages and religious institutions. The model for this role is provided by the Indras and Indranis who are divine kings and queens and who are also the archetypal supporters and worshipers of Jain ascetics. Those who have been "influenced" and "awakened" by Jain ascetics can never again participate in the culture of warrior-kingship as represented by groups like the Rajputs. But royal identity can be expressed in the more limited domain of ritual contexts (as well as other domains such as philanthropy). Ritual culture thus emerges as an arena in which the symbolism of worldly kingship - the choice not taken by those who bear the tradition's highest values, the Tirthankars - is allowed explicit expression.
The sociocultural identity of lay Jains can be said to be poised between two unreachable poles. One pole is heroic asceticism, but this is fully available only to the world renouncer. The other is worldly kingship, but this has been renounced and thus is available only in ritual settings. By default, perhaps, the only truly stable and available platform for a sense of what it means to be a lay Jain is ahimsa itself. Therefore, a Jain laity must be deeply, passionately vegetarian. Such a laity, moreover, must be more vegetarian than other vegetarians, and in all departments of life. Ex-Rajputs who respect Jain ascetics thus become the cultural "others" of Rajputs.
This ambiguity seems to parallel the ambiguity of kingship itself in the wider Jain tradition. How is one to be a Jain king? There have indeed been such, but the institution of kingship is finally suspect; thus, legendary kings (including Rsabh himself) renounce kingship in the end in favor of the spiritual heroism of the ascetic. See Dundas 1991.
