Prof. Dr. Lawrence A. Babb
We began this book by asking what it would mean to worship beings who are believed to be completely beyond the reach of worship. This is the central question in the study of Jainism from the standpoint of ritual. We find that to understand the matter fully it is necessary to look beyond as well as within the Jain tradition. At one level the non-accessibility of the object of worship is a deeply formative fact of Jain ritual culture; at another level it turns out to be a particular logical permutation of general transactional possibilities, one with close analogues elsewhere in South Asian religions. One might even go further to suggest that evidence of similar transactional possibilities might be discovered in ritual cultures beyond the South Asian region.
However, in the final analysis the tradition we have explored has to be understood on its own terms. From within it is a complete world, one that has a strong claim on our attention on its own account. Readers may have suspected that a focus on ritual culture would encourage a narrow view of a rich religious tradition. I hope this book has dispelled that idea, for our concern with ritual roles and symbols has turned out to be a wide net that pulls great realms of cultural detail into view and also into intelligible patterns.
Let there be no mistake on one point. The quest for liberation, the moksmarg, is central to Jain traditions. It just will not do to suggest that this is an arcane interest, confined to ascetic virtuosi, somehow imposed or inflicted on the laity. It is true that most lay Jains of Ahmedabad and Jaipur are theologically unsophisticated. This is also true of many Jain ascetics. And it has to be said as well that - although we cannot truly know what is in others' hearts - most Jain laymen with whom I discussed the matter seemed to have little, if any, sense of liberation as in any meaningful way in prospect for them. Nonetheless, the ideal is seriously held as an ideal, and its influence on ritual symbolism and exegesis is pervasive. Asceticism is the key to liberation, and Jains, as we have said, worship ascetics.
Nonetheless, this seemingly constricted emphasis on ascetic values turns out to be consistent with a surprisingly complex and inclusive view of the world. The tradition utilizes a rich sociopolitical symbolism as a way of providing a connecting point between the world renouncer and those who must remain in the world. The idea of warrior-kingly valor transmuted is at the very heart of the ritual construction of the ascetic. The ascetic's lay worshiper becomes the ascetic's symbolic other - the king/deity who remains in the world to support and admire the ascetic and his projects, and to prosper and flourish while doing so. This same symbolism, in turn, ramifies into an image of how Jain communities came to be and where they fit in the social and cultural worlds of Rajasthan. More than the mere sotetiology it is often thought to be, the Jain tradition, even in its ritual dimensions, can be seen as a unifying vision of the cosmos and our human and creaturely destiny.
