Jainism

I

Introduction

Jainism, one of the great classical religions of India, with Hinduism and Buddhism. Although the Jain community is now much smaller than in the past, it continues to sustain a tradition which is highly influential in both the ethical and economic spheres. There are some three to four million Jains in India today, divided between two major sects, the Shvetambaras and the Digambaras. They are concentrated in the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, and there are also communities in most of the larger cities, notably Ahmadabad and Mumbai. Some six to seven thousand of these Jains are ascetics or renouncers, usually referred to as sadhus or munis (monks), and sadhvis (nuns). The nuns (nearly all Shvetambara) outnumber the monks by four to one, and this imbalance seems to have been the case throughout Jain history. Many lay Jains are merchants or businessmen, although agriculture has also been a common occupation, especially in the south. It is alleged, with some justification, that much of the commercial wealth of India passes through Jain hands. Although the Jains have evolved a caste structure under the influence of Hinduism, today it is largely economic status rather than relative purity which determines ranking.

II

Origins

Jainism, like Buddhism, has its roots in the renouncer milieu, which arose as a challenge to Vedic and Brahman orthodoxy in the middle of the first millennium bc. For historical purposes, Mahavira (the “Great Hero”, traditionally 599-527 bc) is considered the “founder” of Jainism, although there is some evidence that he was the reformer of an earlier form of Jainism associated with Parshva. Two other epithets applied to both Mahavira and Parshva are jina (“(spiritual) conqueror”), from which the Jains derive their name, and tirthankara (“fordmaker” or “creator of the religious community”). According to Jain tradition, Mahavira is merely the 24th, and most recent, in a series of tirthankaras, stretching back through Parshva (the 23rd) to Rishabha, the originator of human culture. Even Rishabha is only the first tirthankara in the current era; there were an infinite number of fordmakers before him, and there are an infinite number to come, although the next is not due for approximately 81,500 years.

III

Doctrine and Practice

Jain religious practice is conditioned by the perception that virtually everything, including the elements, contains sentient, living beings or souls, known as jiva. Everything else in existence, including the matter which embodies these souls, is classified as ajiva, insentient. Consciousness is the defining characteristic of a soul, but this is obscured to a greater or lesser degree by subtle particles known as karma. As a result of any harming action (himsa) done to other jiva, this karmic matter invades and attaches itself to the soul, although it is harm engendered by passion which causes karma to attach itself in the most binding way. Karma, as well as obscuring the potential omniscience of the soul, causes it to be reborn in worse or better embodiments, depending on the amount and intensity accumulated. According to Jain cosmology, there are many different worlds, human, hellish, and heavenly, into which an embodied jiva may be reborn, life after life. For the individual, this cycle of reincarnation will continue unless or until the influx of karmic matter is dammed up and the amount already accumulated shed. When both those conditions are fulfilled, something which can only happen in a human embodiment, the soul attains complete liberation from the bonds of matter and at death rises beyond the heavens to a point at the apex of the inhabited universe, where it remains for eternity in a state of blissful and isolated omniscience. This is the state that all the jinas or tirthankaras have attained. The difference between tirthankaras and other liberated souls is that, after their attainment of omniscience ( kevalajnana), but during their final embodied lifetime, tirthankaras have preached the way to liberation to others.

Given the close connection between violence and karmic bondage, it is hardly surprising that Jain religious practice is conditioned by the ethical imperative of ahimsa or “non-violence”. And it is this paramount concern which governs the formulation of the specific rules and patterns of behaviour Jains have developed to minimize damage to embodied souls. Much of the external behaviour of ascetics, such as wearing mouth shields and using a brush to sweep insects from the immediate vicinity, is a direct reflection of this preoccupation. At the most basic level all Jains are strictly vegetarian. But given that eating and drinking anything at all is bound to do harm to those jiva embodied in plants and water, fasting plays a key role in both ascetic and lay practice. The logical culmination of this is ritual death by fasting (sallekhana), undertaken by some Jains (ascetics and laity) towards the end of their natural lives.

In terms of behaviour, the major dividing line between ascetics and lay people is drawn in terms of the extra vows the former observe with regard to the intake of food, movement, sexual, and economic activity, and possessions. In all these cases, ascetics either radically restrict or abandon the activity altogether. In this way they can hope to make more rapid progress towards liberation than lay Jains, who for most of the time are expected simply to practise restraint in these areas, with optional periods of more stringent practice.

To protect them from attachment and other worldly temptations, ascetics are required to move around on foot, remaining for no more than a few nights in any one place. They wander in small groups (or, in the Digambara case, as individuals) under the direction of senior monks or nuns, relying on lay people to provide them with begged food and new recruits. In return for this support, the ascetics teach Jain doctrine, and through their very availability give the laity an opportunity to acquire merit by feeding them. During the rainy season it is not possible to make harm-free progress on India's roads, because of the proliferation of wildlife, and for that period monks and nuns take up residence in lay-maintained lodging houses (upashraya), sometimes situated in temple precincts. During this retreat the major Shvetambara festival of Paryushan takes place (over eight days in September), when ascetics recite and comment publicly on canonical passages dealing with the life of Mahavira. These episodes are also displayed pictorially.

IV

Sectarian Divisions

There are two major Jain sects, the Shvetambara (the white-clad) and the Digambara (the sky-clad). Their names reflect what became the chief point at issue between them: Digambara monks go naked because, unlike Shvetambara ascetics, who wear white robes, they regard clothing as a possession, and the renunciation of all possessions is a prerequisite for the monastic life, and so ultimately liberation. The fact that doctrinally there is very little between the two sects suggests that their final division occurred at a relatively late date in Jain history. The catalyst may have been a dispute over the authority of religious texts. Although there is agreement between the sects that the very earliest canonical texts have been lost, the Shvetambaras claim that the essence of Mahavira's teaching, if not his actual words, is contained in their surviving canon. This is a voluminous and disparate collection, composed in various forms of Prakrit, and preserved orally within the monastic community until the 5th century ad when it was finally written down. The Digambaras, however, reject these Shvetambara texts as inauthentic, preferring a very much smaller “canon” of their own, and effectively conferring scriptural authority on the Prakrit works of the revered monk Kundakunda (c. 4th century ad).

Both sects contributed extensive commentarial, mythological, narrative, and cosmological literature, in classical Sanskrit as well as the various vernaculars, to the wider Indian inter-religious debate of the medieval period. And it was during this period that the Jains crystallized their distinctive technical philosophy, employing a method of qualified assertion (syadvada) in conjunction with the theory of the many-sided nature of reality (anekantavada). It was the latter which effectively provided a rationale for the Jains' identity-defining ascetic practice, and so protected it from the potential threats of Buddhist and Vedantin thought.

Closely related to their division over clothing and possessions, Digambaras deny the Shvetambara claim that it is possible to attain liberation from a woman's body, a view which, during the medieval period, provoked a unique debate about the salvation of women. In addition to their nakedness, Digambara ascetics follow in general a more rigorous discipline with regard to such matters as begging and consuming food.

The question of nudity affected lay practice as well, in so far as some images of the tirthankaras in Shvetambara temples came to be depicted as robed, thus making it impossible for Digambaras to worship there. Indeed, the commonest form of dispute between the two sects has revolved round the question of the ownership of shrines and holy places.

A number of subsects have formed within both the Shvetambara and Digambara traditions. A major point at issue, cutting across the broader division, has been the religious authenticity of the lay practice of image worship in temples. Most Jains have been “image-worshipping” (murtipujaka), but a significant minority among the Shvetambaras in particular (known as Sthanakavasis, “dwellers in halls”) came to assert that there was no canonical authority for this practice and rejected all temple ritual. Instead their attention was focused on living ascetic teachers. Acarya Tulsi, the current leader of the Shvetambara Terapanth sect (which broke away from the Sthanakavasis in the 18th century), began the Anuvrata movement in 1949 with the intention of making Jain values accessible to the whole of society. He has also been responsible for the creation of a category of lower-order ascetics able to use transport and travel abroad. A notable development among the Digambaras, from medieval times onwards, was the rise of the bhattaraka, a type of cleric with authority over monastic institutions. With a decline in the number of naked monks, bhattarakas became the effective perpetuators of the Digambara tradition.