TeaThat the historical Buddha does not recognize Buddhism practiced in northwest India in 100 CE, about 500 years after his death. The same applies to Jainism practiced in western India in 1000 CE, about one and a half thousand years after the death of the historical Mahavira – a religion of temples and rituals, where Merchant princes commanded armiesand where the idols Tirthankaras glistened with scented liquids. Jainism, once a religion of wandering ascetics with small communities, had, by the medieval period, become one of the great forces of western India. But how did it happen?
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Jain scholar Paul Dundas writes, “There can be no doubt about it.” Jain (2002, p. 201), “that the image cult represents one of the major historical continuities in Jain civilization.”
Of course, while many Jains do not worship idols today, they are mentioned in inscriptions from as early as the 1st century.scheduled tribecentury BC; To this day, some Jain communities perform elaborate rituals such as coronation.Jain Approach Prayer-The ritual where food and flowers are offered to a deity -however, something is different according to Hinduism. Anthropologist Lawrence Babb notes in an edited volume Open Borders: Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian History (1998), Jain Prayer Not strictly “giving” to a deity, but “giving up”, “is an opportunity for the layman to engage for discrete periods of time in the sacrificial activity of the true sannyasin.”
It’s a small, but important distinction. The early Jains seem to have understood the growing importance of idol worship; By focusing on religious activity, images were powerful vehicles for the creation of religious communities. A related development was temple worship, which allowed communities to worship, concentrate resources, and lay claim to political authority. already 4th 1st century CE, Jain monks were associating themselves with temples in Gujarat (Dundas 2002, 136). Here they could interact directly with common followers, involve themselves in rituals and raise funds. This was controversial: according to Jain principles, monks were meant to move from place to place without property. But the clever monk was able to justify it; Dundas Citation A prominent monk who lived in the temple said: “Eventually, Jainism will be destroyed. The ascetics protect them by living in the temples. Scriptural authority to adopt an exception to a general rule to prevent doctrine from being put on the backburner.” Is.” (Dundas 2002, 137).
Jain temples gradually started dotting the Gujarati landscape. In Framing the Jina: Narratives of Icons and Idols in Jain History (2010), Indologist John E. Cort suggests that five sites in present-day Gujarat and Rajasthan came to be seen as the places where the five most popular Jain Tirthankaras—Adinath, Shantinatha, Neminath, Parshvanatha, and Mahavira—had attained enlightenment. Illustration of Ashtapada, the mountain on which the first tirthankara Adinath was enlightened, he was also disseminated, with monks and intellectuals providing classical and mythological-historical justification. by 11thcentury CE, the sites of Girnar and Mount Abu had become sites of magnificent temples built by merchant princes.
All these developments were not without reaction. by 11th century, a radical strain of ascetics determined to return Jain monasticism to its ascetic roots. He began to publicly attack and debate the monks living in the temple, who, we are told, did not cut a very impressive figure: their “garlands and fine clothes, betel-stained hair, betel-stained teeth, shameless expressions, smooth bodies and feet” and hands painted with lacquer” (Dundas 2002, 137), they did not fit the public image of venerated saints. In 1024, we are told that the reformer Jineswara Suri defeated the monks living in the temple in a court debate, leading to their downfall. But the general public was by now convinced of the efficacy of temple worship. Jainism had already changed forever.
Read also: Jaiswals, Oswals, Shahs—the merchant families of Gujarat once had more power than medieval courts
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Perhaps the most important worshipers in medieval Gujarat were a pair of merchant brothers named Vastupal and Tejpal. His activities reveal much about the character of Jainism at this time.
Born into a noble merchant family, he was born in Anahilwada (present-day Patan, Gujarat), historian VK Jain writes in Trade and Merchants in Western India 1000-1300 AD (1990). Anhilvada was the capital of the Chalukya dynasty; The brothers rose to prominence in the service of the Vaghelas, vassals of the Chalukyas. He seems to have taken on the roles of chief minister as well.currency trading”, which included the issuance of trade licenses and permits. As governor of Khambat, Vastupal attacked, defeated and plundered Sayid, a Muslim merchant in the employ of the rajas of southern Gujarat. (Jain 1990, 238). All these activities were very beneficial economically; In 1233, Vastupala built a temple on the Ashtapada mountain in Girnar, which is believed to be the seat of Ashtapada’s wisdom. tirthankara Neminath. He had already built a temple the previous year, to which he later added “two grand pavilions … one each for the merit of his two wives”. (Court 2010, 130).
But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The brothers’ inscriptions appear all over Gujarat, associated with wells, tanks, alms-houses, rest-houses and places of meditation. They are particularly focused on the above five sites Tirthankaras‘ Enlightenment. The brothers embarked on a program of literary patronage, building libraries, commissioning religious texts, and even writing their own works. According to VK Jain (1990, p. 244), the Jain library at Khambat actually has a manuscript copied from Vastupal’s hand; “It was because of her literary activities that Vastupal was known as the ‘bearded Saraswati’ (Kurkal Saraswati, These were all activities that any medieval Indian king could do; He also started a Sanskrit eulogy, describing myself as “marking the earth everywhere with religious establishments, placing one’s foot on the neck of Kali Yuga.” It is of utmost importance that the brothers did all this in a very Jain imagination, following the developments that we have seen in the previous section.
Tejpal’s Neminath temple at Mount Abu is an example of all this. This colossal structure, intricately carved in marble, shows how far Jainism had come since its inception. Smooth, polished bodies, similar to those of a Hindu temple iconography, adorn its pillars; Sunlight shines through its delicately-trimmed screen. Armed with doctrinal innovations and patrons, Jainism weaved itself into the political culture of one of India’s largest trading regions. The Jainism of Western India would escape the terrible fate that befell South Indian Jainism—a subject to which we will return in future volumes. Medieval Thought.
Anirudh Kanisetty is a public historian. He is the author of Lords of the Deccan, a new history of medieval South India, and hosts the Echoes of India and War podcasts. He tweeted @AKanisetti.
This article is a part of ‘Thinking Medieval’ series Which takes a deep dive into the medieval culture, politics and history of India.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)