Prof. Dr. Lawrence A. Babb
A ritual culture supports and is supported by the roles assumed by those who are the actors in ritual performances. From this standpoint, a ritual of worship can be seen as a theater of identity staged within a particular symbolic milieu. Participants in rituals of worship play roles, and in so doing take on identities of various kinds. These ritually enacted identities are built out of - and in turn give life to - ideas, values, and images that are available in the symbolic surround within which the rites in question occur.
This book has been an exploration of the implications of this idea in a Jain frame of reference. Among image-worshiping Svetambar Jains we have discovered a ritual culture that is manifested in a distinctive pattern of interaction between worshipers and the sacred. At its core is the most fundamental fact of all about Jain ritual culture-often reiterated here - that Jains worship ascetics. All religious traditions must deal with inner tensions and ambiguities; in the case of Jain ritual culture, these arise largely from the asceticism of the object of worship. Within the domain of Svetambar ritual culture, the central question is always that of how the relationship between a worshiper and an ascetic object of worship is to be defined, and, correlatively, how the identity of the worshiper is to be conceived. The issue of the worshiper's identity is of course a transposition of the question of how it is possible to be a lay Jain, expressed in ritual terms. In the Jain ritual culture with which we have been concerned, we have found the identity of the worshiper to be defined at three identifiable levels.
On one level we find what we might call "soteriological" identity. Here the worshiper imitates the object of worship; in so doing, he or she enacts a hoped-for liberation, to be achieved by means of an ascetic shedding of the world. This interpretation of the worshiper's identity directly reflects the values and aspirations of the moks marg, the Jain path of liberation, and it is most favored by ascetics and those who adopt the ascetic point of view. Who is the worshiper according to this interpretation? He or she is someone headed for liberation, however long the wait may have to be.
At the second level is what we might call "royal" identity. Here the worshiper is identified with Indra or Indrani, the king or queen of the gods. This image is the negative other of that of the Tirthankar - one who, as we have seen, gave up earthly kingship to become a king of the spirit instead. It is also highly resonant with the notion of the worshiper as one who prospers in the world, as do the kings and queens of the gods. Such a worshiper admires and supports ascetics, and reaps the material rewards of doing so; he or she defers, though in no sense disclaims, the actual seeking of liberation. Who is the worshiper according to this interpretation? He or she is someone who is certainly on the road to liberation, but who is headed down a detour of worldly felicity along the way.
This image of the worshiper is in deep tension with the soteriological image, and because of the tradition's profound bias in favor of world renunciation, the most prestigious interpretations of worship tend to favor the image of the worshiper as a world renouncer. In the case of Svetambar Jains associated with the Khartar Gacch, this tension is resolved in the ritual subculture of the cult of the Dadagurus. In this cult the pressure to define the worshiper as an ascetic who emulates the object of worship is relaxed. Here the worshiper is imaged as a seeker of worldly assistance engaged in transactions with powerful ascetics, ascetics who can and do intervene in his or her worldly affairs. Asceticism, as it were, is sequestered by projecting it entirely on the role of the object of worship, and of course the asceticism of the object of worship is, finally, flawed by comparison with that of the Tirthankars. These transactions are nonetheless invested with Jain legitimacy by stressing the ascetics' membership in a spiritual lineage connecting them with the Tirthankar, by associating their powers with Jain ascetic praxis, and by insisting that current interventions in the affairs of their devotees are latter-day manifestations of the Dadagurus' historical efforts to protect and elevate Jainism. Thus, their worshipers are free to pursue worldly felicity with minimal twinges of conscience.
The third level is that of social identity. In the Rajasthani materials we have surveyed, we have seen that at this level the focus on the worshiper's identity as Indra or Indrani is shifted somewhat; the worshiper still adopts the role of Indra or Indrani, but superimposed over that role - and deeply consistent with it - is the identity of the worshiper as the lineal descendant of the medieval warrior-kings of Rajasthan. Who is the worshiper? He or she is a person of warrior-kingly lineage who has come before a powerful ascetic seeking help as his or her ancestors did long ago. That is, he or she is an Osval Jain - or indeed a member of any of the many Jain groups who consider themselves to be the descendants of Ksatriyas, who were long ago converted to Jainism by powerful ascetics.
Two facts unite these three projections of the worshiper's identity. The first is the centrality of asceticism itself. It must be remembered always that Jains worship ascetics, and this is crucially true of each of the three levels of lay identity that we have discovered in Svetambar ritual culture. The other common element - profoundly related to the first - is the metaphor of kingship. Tirthankars are kings-who-might-have-been, who chose to renounce the world instead of to rule it. Those who worship the Tirthankars face the same choice that they did. They are either ascetics, in imitation of the Tirthankar, or they take on the identities of the kings and queens of the gods. For worshipers of the Dadagurus this latter identity grades into the identity of the sons and daughters of earthly kings.
