Absent Lord: Osiya

Thesedays Osiya is a rather sleepy village, but legend proclaims it to have once been a large and flourishing city. Today it is an archaeological site of major importance, and it is also notable for two functioning temples.^[1] One contains an image of Lord Mahavir. This temple dates from the eighth century C.E., and according to one writer (Dhaky 1968: 312) is the oldest surviving Jain temple in western India. The other temple, but a short distance from Mahavir's, is dedicated to a goddess known as Saciya Mata. Her main importance is that she is lineage goddess (kuldevi) to large numbers of Osval Jains. The town is accordingly an important pilgrimage center for Osvals, and the volume of pilgrimage appears to have been increasing over the last three decades (Meister 1989: 280).

What I am calling the "Osiya legend" is a myth of Osval origin that traces the caste's beginnings to ancient Osiya. This story, a variant of which I was told by the pujari's of the Saciya Mata temple at Osiya, has been retold in its various forms by Mangilal Bhutoriya in his recent Osval history (1988: 67-72), and I shall be drawing heavily on his materials in the description and analysis to follow.^[2] Let me hasten to add that this analysis is not meant as an endorsement of the idea that Jain clans originated as Rajput clans. The question of how Osval clans actually arose is completely beyond the ambit of this study. Our concern here is with Osval images of their origin and identity.

The story actually begins not in Osiya itself but in the legendary ancient city of Srimal. This city is said to have been the place of origin of the Srimal caste, the other major Svetambar caste in Jaipur, but it also figures centrally in the origin of the Osvals. The roots of the tale go back to the life of Parsvanath, the twenty-third Tirthankar with whose five-kalyanak puja this book began. Parsvanath's liberation is said to have occurred in 777 B.C.E., and of course after his departure the lineage of his disciples continued. Later came Lord Mahavir, and many of Parsvanath's followers joined Mahavir's congregation (sangh). According to this legend, however, many stayed on in Parsvanath's own disciplic lineage, which was known as the Upkes Gacch.^[3] It was Parsvanath's supposed fifth successor, an acarya of the Upkes Gacch named Svayamprabhsuri, who established the Srimal caste (above).

At this point the story shifts to the city of Srimal.^[4] This city, now identified with the town of Bhinmal in Jalor District, was once a flourishing business center. At the time that Lord Mahavir walked the earth (as the tale goes), the city's monarchy was under the influence of vammargi (tantric) Brahmans. Hundreds of thousands of animals were sacrificed in religious rites, and the people were much given to meat and liquor (mas-madira) and lewd behavior of all kinds. Buddhism and Jainism had not yet arrived, and the whole region was given over to the worship of various gods and goddesses and the appeasing of ghosts and demons.

The king of Srimal was a Ksatriya named Jaysen. He had two sons: Bhimsen and Candrasen. When the king died, Bhimsen—whowas a worshiper of Siva—succeededhim, and he changed the name of the city to Bhinmal. He, in turn, had two sons: Sri Puñj and Utpaldev (Upaldev).^[7] On Bhimsen's death Sri Puñj became king, His minister's name was Suhar, and Suhar had a younger brother named Uhar. Suhar was a millionaire, and Uhar was in need of a large sum of money. At that time in Bhinmal there were three separate sections of the City reserved for men of three different levels of wealth, and Uhar apparently lacked the funds to live in a respectable area. When Uhar asked his brother for the money, his wife (in this version Uhar's wife; in other versions his brother's wife) taunted him.^[5] Stung by this, Uhar went to Utpaldev, and the two left Bhinmal together. On the road, Utpaldev bought some horses, and when at last they arrived at Delhi he gave the horses as a gift to the king there, whose name was "Sadhu". In return, the king gave him permission to establish a new kingdom on unused land.

The pair then went to Mandor, and near there, at a spot thirty miles north of Jodhpur, they established a city. Thousands of people of all four varna's came from Bhinmal to settle there. This city was later to be known as Osiya. Some say that it acquired this name from the term osla, the Marwari term for "refuge" or "shelter"; others say that it was named for the "dewy" (osili) land upon which it was founded (Handa 1984: 8-9). Others still believe that the original name of the town was Upkespur, and that this name evolved into Osiya (Bhutoriya1988: 125).

According to the Osiya legend, it was in this city, which later became large and flourishing, that the Osval caste was established. One version of how this happened is as follows.^[6] Seventy years after Lord Mahavir's liberation (or 400 years before the vikram era)^[7] a mendicant named Ratnaprabhsuri came to Upkespur (that is, Osiya) with 500 ascetic followers. Ratnaprabhsuri was the sixth successor of Parsvanath (and presumably the immediate successor of Svayamprabhsuri, above), and had achieved the status of acarya fifty-two years after Mahavir's liberation. At that time, King Utpaldev and his subjects were devotees of Camunda Devi (a meat-eating Hindu goddess), tantrics (vammargi s), and completely ignorant of Jain ways. It was therefore very difficult for Jain ascetics to obtain alms, and Ratnaprabhsuri ordered his ascetic followers to leave. However, at the pleading of Camunda Devi herself he relented, and, sending 465 of his followers to Gujarat, he spent the rainy season retreat with the remaining thirty-five in Upkespur. At that time Utpaldev's companion, Uhar, was still with him and had become his state minister. One day Uhar's son was bitten by a snake and apparently died. Ratnaprabhsuri sprinkled the boy with water in which his own feet had been washed, and the boy was restored to life. All were overjoyed, and 184,000 Ksatriyas became Jains.^[8] These new Jains were later to be known as Osval from the name of the city in which this happened.

In another version of the tale, one that closely resembles the version I was told by the pujari 's of the Saciya Mata temple, Ratnaprabhsuri sent all 500 ascetic followers to Gujarat and stayed in Upkespur with but one disciple.^[9] The disciple was at first unable to obtain alms, but he finally succeeded in getting some from an ailing householder whom he cured with medicine.^[10] When he learned of this, Ratnaprabhsuri became angry (probably because dan, a religious donation, should never be gotten by exchange) and prepared to leave. Then Saciya Mata (that is, Camunda Devi by a different name) appeared and begged him to teach religion to the people. He thereupon transformed a roll of wool into a snake and gave it this order: "Do what will prosper the daya dharm [Jainism]." The snake bit Utpaldev's son. King Utpaldev tried every remedy but to no avail; the prince appeared to die, and there were great lamentations in the city. The townspeople then began to take the corpse to the burning grounds. But, ordered to do so by Ratnaprabhsuri, the disciple stopped the procession and said that if the body were taken to his guru the prince's life would be restored. So they all went to the great monk and pleaded with him for the prince's life. The monk told the king that if he and his people would accept Jainism then the prince would be cured. They agreed, and by magical means the monk then called the snake. It came, removed all of the poison from the prince by sucking the bite, and disappeared. After hearing the teachings of Jainism from the Ratnaprabhsuri, the king and 125,000 Rajputs then became Jains.

In yet another version,^[11] King Utpaldev's daughter, Saubhagya Devi, had married Uhar's son, Trilok Singh. Trilok Singh was bitten by a snake and the daughter was ready to become a sati^[12] when he was revived by the monk's footwashings. The conversions followed.

As are other castes—Hindu and Jain—the Osval caste is divided into exogamous patrilineal clans called gotra's. The Osiya legend accounts for these by saying that there were originally eighteen Rajput clans in Osiya, and that Ratnaprabhsuri changed these into the eighteen original Osval clans (mul gotra s), which later differentiated into 498 subbranches. In his retelling of this, Bhutoriya (1988: 172-85) also lists clans founded by Ratnaprabhsuri at places other than Osiya as well as clans founded by other acarya's belonging to Ratnaprabhsuri's ascetic lineage (the Upkes Gacch). He also lists clans founded by acarya's of other ascetic lineages, but this he does not stress. As we shall see later, an emphasis on the conversions performed by acarya's of other ascetic lineages reflects a somewhat different perspective on Osval origins.