Bhakti in Early Jain

Bhakti in the Early Jain Tradition: Understanding Devotional Religion in South Asia
Author(s): John E. Cort

Source: History of Religions, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Aug., 2002), pp. 59-86
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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John E. Cort BHAKTI IN THE EARLY
JAIN TRADITION:
UNDERSTANDING
DEVOTIONAL RELIGION
IN SOUTH ASIA
Almost all scholarship on the Jains has approachedJain bhakti as merely

a "borrowing"from the Hindu tradition. Scholars of India have implic-
itly viewed bhakti in the Jain traditionas an "accretion"that is marginal
to the ascetic core that constitutes the "guiding project" of "true" and
"original" Jainism and that therefore can safely be ignored by scholar-
ship.' For example, the art historian M. A. Dhaky has recently written
that by the fifth century C.E., "the Nirgrantha[Jain] sects could no longer
afford to lag behind their brahmanical and Buddhist rivals. The strong
currents of devotional trends impelled even the stern, highly conser-
vative recluses to make adjustmentsto the changing cultural climes and
religious moods and to concede to the new exigencies."2
Versions of this paper were delivered at the Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison,
Wisconsin; the HarvardUniversity Colloquium on South Asian Religions; the Columbia
University Religion DepartmentColloquium; the HarvardDivinity School; the University
of Pennsylvania; and the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. I would like to thank
Alan Babb, Anna Bigelow, Klaus Bruhn,John Carman,M. A. Dhaky, Paul Dundas, Charlie
Hallisey, Jack Hawley, Janice Leoshko, Anne Monius, Leslie Orr, Indira Peterson, Jim
Ryan, the late Nathmal Tatia, and Bob Zydenbos for helpful comments on earlier drafts
and presentations and insightful discussions on these matters.
1 This
terminology is that of Michael Carrithersfrom his "Jainismand Buddhism as En-
during Historical Streams,"Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 21 (1990):
141-63.
2 M. A.
Dhaky, "The Jina Image and the Nirgrantha Agamic and Hymnic Imagery,"
in Shastric Traditions in Indian Arts, ed. Anna Libera Dallapiccola (Stuttgart: Steiner,
1989), p. 98.
? 2002 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0018-2710/2003/4201-0003$10.00
60 Bhakti in the Early Jain Tradition
This portraitof the Jain tradition,I argue, is extremely misleading. In

this article, I investigate several loci for the indigenous development of
devotional practices and patterns within the Jain tradition and in partic-
ular in some of the earliest available levels of the tradition.I do not want
to argue that everything within the Jain tradition can be accounted for
through internal developments with no reference to the larger Indian/
Hindu universe. Nor do I want to argue that the various religious tra-
ditions did not interact. Of course they did, probably more so than we
are aware, and one of my contentions is that scholarship has paid insuf-
ficient attentionto this interaction.But only by coming to an understand-
ing of bhakti within the Jain tradition can we begin to see adequately
how devotional patterns within the Jain tradition interacted with devo-
tional patternsoutside the tradition and begin, therefore, to get a clearer
picture of the place of the Jains in the history of devotional religion in
India.
My argumentin this article can be stated as follows: if the development
of bhakti within the Jain tradition can be accounted for satisfactorily
without recourse to explanations of borrowing or accretion, then (1) our
understandingof the Jain traditionitself needs to be modified, (2) our un-
derstandingof the role of the Jains in the development of bhakti within
Indian religion as a whole needs to be modified, and (3) perhaps our un-
derstandingof bhakti itself needs to be expanded.
At one level the issue of "borrowing"is really a nonissue. When a
scholar argues that because a practice, institution, or belief has been bor-
rowed from another traditionits role in the borrowing traditionis there-
fore of negligible importance,the scholar is making a fundamentalerror
of judging the data by standardsinappropriateto any form of objective
scholarship. If it could be conclusively proven that the Trinitariandoc-
trine in Christianity,for example, entered into Christiantheology as a re-
sult of the interactionbetween Christiantheology and Greek philosophy
in the early centuries C.E., would any scholar seriously argue on this basis
that the Trinitariandoctrine should thereforebe dismissed from the study
of Christianityas derivative and borrowed?But this is precisely the level
at which many scholars of Indianreligion have argued.The legitimacy of
Jain bhakti is not a subject that is open to scholarly debate here. Jains
have performed and discussed bhakti for over two thousand years, and
therefore it is an important,even essential, part of the Jain tradition.
But at another level, the issue of borrowings and influences is impor-
tant, for it helps us to understandthe history of South Asian religions.
The student of Jainism need not be overly concerned with the origins
of bhakti within India as a whole, but this is an issue of great interest to
the student of bhakti and South Asian religion. Here, examination of the
claim that bhakti originated in a Hindu context and was subsequently
History of Religions 61
borrowedby Jains and Buddhists is an importanttask. The evidence pre-

sented in this article that bhakti in the Jain traditiondates from too early
a period to have been only a borrowed practice sheds valuable light on
the history of religious practices and beliefs in South Asia.
In orderto understandbhakti fully in all its manifestations in India, we
need to move beyond the standardacademic definition of bhakti with its
concern for the derivation of bhakti from notions of sharing and onto-
logical interpenetration.3While Indian pandits have always loved to ru-
minate on etymological connections, and etymology is a valid form of
preliminaryanalysis in many Indian philosophical systems, it is a prob-
lematic tool in Westernlinguistic theory.4Etymology does not tell us how
a concept is understood in its actual usage, and the history of language
is full of words that have acquired meanings diametrically opposed to
their original usage. The linguist John Algeo has discussed the "etymo-
logical fallacy," "by which the historically-minded prescriptivist may
suppose that, because disheveled once meant 'with disarrangedhair' (OF
chevel, 'hair'), a bald man cannot be so described, or that, because dis-
interested once meant 'impartial,'it may not now mean 'unconcerned."'5
Undue concern with etymology can blind one to the subsequent history
of a word. This is clearly the case with the focus on bhakti as "sharing."
J. A. B. van Buitenen points out that the word and concept "bhakti"de-
veloped in ways somewhat different from sharing: "The vast concept of
sharing allowed of specialization, and meanings developed in two direc-
tions: offering someone else a share in something; and accepting or
adopting something as one's allotted share. The latter usage evolved fur-
ther into 'declaringfor, choosing for.' It is the last of these meanings that
governs later uses of the word bhakti."6The meanings of a concept in
practice and in history are understood by studying the ways in which it
3 See, e.g., John Carman, "Bhakti,"in The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Mac-
millan, 1987), 2:130: "The Sanskrit noun bhakti is derived from the verbal root bhaj,
which means 'to share in' or 'to belong to,' as well as 'to worship."' For similar statements
see, among others, John StrattonHawley, "Bhakti,"in Encyclopedia of Asian History, ed.
Ainslie T. Embree (New York: Scribner, 1988), 1:154; John Stratton Hawley and Mark
Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988),
p. 4; A. K. Ramanujan,Hymnsfor the Drowning (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1981), pp. 103-4, n. 2; and N. Shanta, La voiejaina (Paris: O.E.I.L., 1985), p. 72.
See also Karen Pechilis Prentiss, The Embodimentof Bhakti (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999), esp. pp. 17-24, for a discussion of the history of the study of bhakti and
problems involved with different translationsof the term.
4 For example, in Jain epistemology, samabhiridhanaya (etymology) is one of the seven
nayas, or valid but partial viewpoints.
5 John
Algeo, "Semantic Change,"in Research Guide on Language Change, ed. Edgar
C. Polom6 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 402-3. I thank Mark Hale for this
reference.
6 J. A. B. van Buitenen, The Bhagavadgita in the Mahabhdrata(Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1981), p. 24.
is used, not by investigating its origins. In the case of bhakti, this means
studying the contexts of ritual and discourse.
Clearly, certain forms of bhakti do involve such an ontological inter-
action and even interpenetrationwith the divine. But just as clearly,
many forms of bhakti deny or redefine the possibility of such an interac-
tion. The study of Jain bhakti shows us that bhakti can involve the denial
of any "real presence" and that it is possible for bhakti to exist without
any direct ontological connection between the individual human and the
divine. The Jain case shows us that it is necessary to reconceptualize and
broaden our understandingof bhakti. Ratherthan start from a particular
theologically normative definition of bhakti and then study the ways in
which various practices, beliefs, and sects correspondto or deviate from
that definition, scholars of bhakti must investigate as equally meaningful
all those practices and beliefs that Indians over the centuries have called
bhakti. Bhakti has been understoodand studied in an overly narrowway;
we need an expanded field of vision. Bhakti is not restricted to what
scholars say it is; rather, it is primarily what bhaktas have said it is,
and these bhaktas have included Vaisnavas, Saivas, Saktas, Sants, Jains,
Buddhists, and others. We then find that bhakti is a highly complex, mul-
tiform cultural category, which is differently understood and practiced
in different times, places, and sects. Bhakti is both something that one
does and an attitudethat can suffuse all of one's actions. Bhakti can range
from sober respect and venerationthat upholds socioreligious hierarchies
and distinctions to fervent emotional enthusiasm that breaks down all
such hierarchies and distinctions in a radical soteriological egalitarian-
ism.7 Bhakti is not one single thing. It is many things, and a significant
part of the study of the history of Indian religion and theology is the
study of the stridentdisagreementsover what bhakti is and how it is to be
practiced. Such an understandingof bhakti helps make more sense not
only of Jain bhakti but also of Buddhist bhakti-like practices and later
forms such as the nirgun bhakti of the Sants and Sikhs as well as forms
of Vaisnava, Saiva, and Sakta bhakti that more closely approximateto
the definition of bhakti as ontological participation.
The reader will find "bhakti"being used in two broad senses in this
article, and there will be occasions on which the two senses merge into
each other. On the one hand, I employ "bhakti"at a microlevel, as spe-
cific to texts and ritual idioms in and for which the Jains themselves use
the term. On the other hand, I employ "bhakti"at a more intermediate
level, as indicative of an India-wide and India-specific discourse. Here,
bhakti is part and parcel of the attempts of Indians to understandtheir
7 Friedhelm
Hardyin Viraha-bhakti(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983) draws a sim-
ilar distinction between intellectual bhakti and emotional bhakti. But in this dichotomy, he
underestimatesthe role of emotion in intellectual bhakti.
own culture and their own religious values, and "bhakti"is a key term in
second-level analysis.8
THE STANDARD PORTRAYALOF BHAKTI AND DEVOTION

IN THE JAIN TRADITION
This is not the place to rehearsethe history of the first century and a half
of the study of the Jains by Westernscholars. I have elsewhere discussed
the problems in Jain studies caused by the models employed by those
early scholars.9But suffice it to say that at the center of the early portrait
was the understandingthat the core of the tradition consisted of the as-
cetic, world-renouncingpractices of the mendicants. This is seen clearly
in the work of Hermann Jacobi, the most important of the early Jain
scholars. In the introductionto his translationof volume 1 of the Jaina
Sutras in the Sacred Books of the East series, in which he firmly laid to
rest the notion that the Jains were an offshoot of the Buddhists, he briefly
discusses mirtipija (rites to Jina images):
I believethatthis worshiphadnothingto do withoriginalBuddhismor Jainism,

thatit did not originatewith the monks,but with the lay community,whenthe
people in generalfelt the wantof a highercult thanthat of theirrudedeities
anddemons,andwhenthe religiousdevelopmentof Indiafoundin the Bhakti
the suprememeansof salvation.Thereforeinsteadof seeing in the Buddhists
the originals,andin the Jainasthe imitators,withregardto the erectionof tem-
ples and worshipof statues,we assumethat both sects were, independently
fromeach other,broughtto adoptthis practiceby the perpetualandirresistible
influenceof the religiousdevelopmentof the peoplein India.10
Jacobi's insistence that image worship (and, by extension, bhakti) was

a borrowed practice laid on the original ascetic core of the Jain tradition
by the common lay masses is all the more puzzling in that the very first
8 I am not, however,
proposing for bhakti a third, more general level as a category in
the extra-Indiancomparative study of religion. While there is much to be said for employ-
ing bhakti as a generic category, I am sufficiently persuaded by the arguments advanced
by Charles Hallisey ("Buddhist Devotion: Some Comments on InterpretiveHabits in the
Study of Indian Religions," unpublished manuscript) that I am hesitant to use bhakti in
such third-level analysis. At the same time, I do not fully agree with him that the term "de-
votion" better serves our needs. See my discussion of the limitations of "devotion" as a
comparative category (John E. Cort, "Singing the Glory of Asceticism: Devotion of As-
ceticism in Jainism," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 70 [2002], in
press).
9 See John E. Cort, "Models of and Models for the Study of the Jains,"Method and
Theory in the Study of Religion 2 (1990): 42-71; and Kendall W. Folkert, "Jain Religious
Life at Ancient Mathura:The Heritage of Late Victorian Interpretation,"in his Scripture
and Community:Collected Essays on the Jains, ed. John E. Cort (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1993), 95-112.
10Hermann Jacobi, "Introduction,"in his trans. of Jaina Sutras (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1884), l:xxi.
article he published on the Jains was an edition and German translation

of two of the most popularof all the many Jain bhakti hymns, the Bhak-
tamara Stotra of Manatuiiga and the Kalyanamandira Stotra of Sid-
dhasena Divakara, followed two years later by the edition and German
translation of the Sobhana Stuti of Sobhana.ll About the same time,
Johannes Klatt, another of the early German scholars of the Jains, pub-
lished an edition and German translation of a fourth hymn, the Rsa-
bhapancdsaikaof Dhanapala.12These were not marginal publications;
they appearedin two major German Indological journals, Indische Stu-
dien and Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft. So
these early Jainologists knew of the existence of the Jain devotional
material-and hymns in all of the many languages in which Jains have
written comprise the largest single block of manuscriptsin the vast Jain
manuscriptcollections-but somehow they never fully incorporatedthe
existence of this material into their understandingof the Jain tradition.
The existence of bhakti and image worship could not be ignored com-
pletely, but it was understoodas a borrowing from Hinduism on the part
of the laity, who themselves were understoodas "second class Jains,"in
contrastto the mendicants, who were the truly importantJains. As a bor-
rowed practice of lay Jains, bhakti was therefore considered to be mar-
ginal. This judgment was clearly enunciated by Georg Buhler in one of
the first overviews of the Jain tradition:
It is no doubtto be ascribedto the influenceof the laity thatthe atheisticJaina

system,as well as the Buddhist,has been endowedwith a cult. The ascetic,in
his strivingforNirvana,endeavorsto suppressthe naturaldesireof manto wor-
ship higherpowers.In the worldlyhearer,who does not strive afterthis goal
exclusively,this could not succeed.Since the doctrinegave no othersupport,
the religiousfeeling of the laity clung to the founderof it: Jina,andwith him
his mythicalpredecessors,becamegods. Monumentsand templesornamented
with statueswerebuilt,especiallyat those places, wherethe prophets,accord-
ing to legends,hadreachedtheirgoal. To this is addeda kindof worship,con-
sisting of offeringsof flowersand incense to Jina, of adorationby songs of
praisein celebrationof theirentryinto Nirvana,of which the Jainamakesa
greatfestivalby solemnprocessionsandpilgrimagesto the placeswhereit has
been attained.13
ll HermannJacobi, "Zwei Jaina-Stotra,"Indische Studien 14 (1876): 359-91, and "Die

Cobhana Stutayas des (obhana Muni," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen 32
(1878): 509-34. On the first of these, see John E. Cort, "Devotional Culture in Jainism:
Mantunga and His BhaktamaraStotra,"in South Asian Religion in History and Culture:
Festschriftfor David Maclay Knipe, ed. James Blumenthal (in press).
12Johannes,Klatt, "Dhanapala'sRishabhapafcaciika," Zeitschriftder Deutschen Morgen-
Idndischen 33 (1879): 445-77.
13 JohannGeorg Biihler, The Indian Sect of the Jainas, trans.Jas. Burgess (1903; reprint,
Calcutta: Susil Gupta [India] Private, 1963), pp. 14-15; originally published in Germanas
With the notable exception of the recent scholarship of M. Whitney

Kelting, this omission of the extensive role played by devotion in both
the literatureand the practices of the Jains has continued to the present. 4
Most scholars have employed an implicit argumentby silence as to the
relative unimportanceof devotion in the Jain tradition by avoiding any
mention of the subject. For a clear case of this approach,see Padmanabh
S. Jaini's pathbreakingThe Jaina Path of Purification.15Walther Schu-
bring wrote a valuable overview of the Jain hymns but did not let this
evidence alter his understanding of the ascetic nature of the Jain tra-
dition, as seen in his major work, The Doctrine of the Jainas.16 Others
have continued the approachof dismissing devotion as a lay phenome-
non (even though almost all the hymns were composed by mendicants)
borrowed from the Hindus.17Even Paul Dundas in The Jains, the best
single-volume overview of the traditionyet written, relegates bhakti to a
single reference, although he does recognize that it "was from an early
period a necessary part of the Jain path."'8
Part of the problem is that most scholars have identified Jainism as a
reified body of doctrine that is essentially unchangingover time, whereas
I view Jainism as the sum total of the practices and beliefs of all people
who called themselves Jain throughoutthe centuries, as revealed in texts,
inscriptions, buildings, images, paintings, and other historical records-
in sum, what Wilfred Cantwell Smith has termed a "cumulative tradi-
tion."19But the issue here is not just that bhakti is a part of the cumula-
tive tradition that is not part of the ideological core, or a Jain "little
tradition"that is not part of the Jain "great tradition."The main thesis
of this article is precisely that bhakti has been an important aspect of
both Jain practice and Jain doctrine from the earliest levels for which we
have evidence, but previous scholarship has ignored this presence in its
Uber die Indische Secte der Jaina (Wien [Vienna]: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, 1887).
14
See M. Whitney Kelting, Singing to the Jinas: Jain Laywomen,Mandal Singing, and
the Negotiations of Jain Devotion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
15PadmanabhS. Jaini, The Jaini Path Purification
of (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1979).
16Walther
Schubring, "Aus der Jinistischen Stotra-Literatur,"in Jianamuktavali, ed.
Claus Vogel (New Delhi: InternationalAcademy of Indian Culture, 1959), pp. 194-220,
and The Doctrine of the Jainas, trans.Wolfgang Buerlen (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,1962).
17 For two further
examples among many, see the following standard entries on the
Jains: Colette Caillat, "Jainism,"in The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York:Macmillan,
1987), 7:510; and Carlo della Casa, "Jainism,"in Historia Religionum, vol. 2, Religions of
the Present, ed. C. Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (Leiden: Brill, 1971), p. 362.
18 Paul
Dundas, The Jains (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 147. This lacuna is addressed
in the forthcoming second edition of the book, in which Dundas includes a much more ex-
tensive discussion of Jain bhakti.
19Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Macmillan,
1963).
portrayalof the Jains and so has distortedthat portrait.Even those schol-

ars who have written on Jain bhakti, such as M. A. Dhaky, Dalsukh Mal-
vania, Kamal Chand Sogani, and N. Shanta, have been so influenced by
the standardmodel of the Jain tradition that they have not been able to
see clearly the importance of the material at hand, nor have they been
willing to let the material alter that model.20The attitudeof these schol-
ars is perhapsmost clearly seen in the following statementby Sogani: "It
is generally recognised that devotion in Jainism is a contradiction of
terms, since devotion presupposes the existence of a Being who can ac-
tively respond to the aspirations of the devotee, and in Jainism such a
conception of Being is inadmissable."21Malvania, widely viewed as one
of the leading twentieth-centuryscholars on Jainism, wrote in a similar
vein, when he said, "A comparison of the basic principles of the cult of
devotion with the ... ones of Jainismwill make it obvious that the former
have no place in Jainism."22Such preunderstandingsclearly can only ob-
scure the importance of the data at hand.
These scholars of Jainism have shared a common academic assump-
tion, that bhakti and asceticism are incompatible practices.23But bhakti
is as much a matterof the spirit in which one performs practices such as
asceticism as it is a form of practice itself, and one of the contributions
of Jainism to our understandingof bhakti is that most ascetic practices in
the Jain traditionare performedin the spirit of enthusiastic bhakti to the
Jinas and the gurus. In other words, bhaktiis not only a practice;it is also
a style in which one performs many practices.24
We thus find in scholarship on the Jains a tendency to privilege data
that confirm the assumption that ascetic practices form the true core of
Jain practice and a relatedtendency to consider as unimportantthose data
that do not confirm this assumption. This scholarly model, however, has
been developed and maintained at the cost of ignoring much pertinent
data. While much of our early nontextual data on the Jains consists of
inscriptions in caves for ascetics in places such as Allahabad in Uttar
Pradesh, Girnarin Saurashtra,Udayagiri and Khandagiriin Orissa, and
Madurai in Tamil Nadu, there is as much if not more early nontextual
data that indicate a central role of image worship. In the study of the
20
Dhaky, "The Jina Image and the Nirgrantha Agamic and Hymnic Imagery" (n. 2
above), pp. 93-108; Dalsukh Malvania, "Bhaktimargaand Jainism,"in his Jainism (Some
Essays) (Jaipur:PrakritBharati Academy, 1986), pp. 76-88; Kamal Chand Sogani, "The
Concept of Devotion in Jainism,"VishveshvaranandIndological Journal 4 (1966): 65-71;
Shanta (n. 3 above), pp. 72-75.
21
Sogani, p. 65.
22 Malvania,
"Bhaktimargaand Jainism,"p. 78.
23 This is most
clearly seen in Shanta'sdiscussion of bhakti.
24 For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Cort,
"Singing the Glory of Asceticism" (n. 8
above).
Jains, as in the study of the Buddhists, these physical data that clearly
indicate the central role of image worship have been largely disregarded
in favor of certain kinds of normative, textual data, in which the role of
image worship and devotion is less central, or else placed in a subsidiary
role as explicating those textual data.25
EARLY INSCRIPTIONALAND ARCHAEOLOGICALEVIDENCE FOR

IMAGE-WORSHIP
The inscription of the MahameghavahanaKing Kharavelain the Hathi-
gumpha cave on Udayagiri Hill outside of Bhubaneswar,Orissa, which
has been dated to the late first centuryB.C.E. or the early first centuryC.E.,
makes a reference to the image of a Jina that had been taken away from
Kalinga (Orissa) by the Nanda king and that Kharavela recapturedand
returnedto his capital.26The description of the image as the "Kalinga
Jina" would appear to indicate that this was an image associated with a
royal temple. It certainly attests to the importanceof a Jina image at this
early time.
We also have a numberof ancient Jina images. Two stone headless tor-
sos of images from Lohanipur,near Patna,and now in the PatnaMuseum,
have been dated to the early centuries C.E.27Also from Bihar are eighteen
bronzes from Chausa, six of seated Jinas and ten of standing Jinas, as
well as a teaching wheel (dharmacakra)and a wishing tree (kalpavrksa).
Most of these images date from the early Gupta period (fourth century
C.E.), but several of them perhaps date from somewhat earlier in the
Kusana period, that is, from the second century C.E.28Yet another early
bronze image, in this case, a standing Parsvanatha,is in the Prince of
25 On the
study of Buddhists, see Gregory Schopen, "Archaeology and ProtestantPre-
suppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism,"in his Bones, Stones, and BuddhistMonks:
Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy,and Textsof Monastic Buddhismin India
(Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997), pp. 1-22. On the study of the Jains, see
Kendall W. Folkert, "Jain Religious Life at Ancient Mathura"(n. 9 above).
26 The literatureon the Hathigumphainscription is extensive. The most recent work on
it is Shashi Kant, The Hathigumpha Inscription of Kharavela and the Bhabru Edict of
Asoka-a Critical Study (Delhi: Prints India, 1971).
27 FrederickAsher and Walter Spink ("MauryaFigural Sculpture Reconsidered,"in Ars
Orientalis 19 [1989]: 1-25) have recently argued for dating the Lohanipur torso to the
Kusana period, roughly the second century C.E.,ratherthan the earlier datings to the first
century B.C.E.Similarly, H. Sarkar ("An Evaluation of Date of TirthankaraImages from
Lohanipur,"in Indian Studies: Essays Presented in Memory of Prof: Niharranjan Ray, ed.
Amita Ray, H. Senyal, and S. C. Ray [Delhi: Caxton, 1985], pp. 39-42) has argued for a
first-century-c.E.date.
28 The most recent discussion of these pieces is found in Frederick Asher, The Art of
Eastern India, 300-800 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), pp. 17-18.
Binoy KumarSahay, "The Jaina Art of Bihar (Up to Pre-Pala Period),"in Facets of Indian
Civilization: Recent Perspectives (Essays in Honour of Prof. B. B. Lal), ed. Jagae Pati
Joshi (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 1997), pp. 397-402, provides an overview
of the scholarship on both the Chausa bronzes and the Lohanipurtorso.
Wales Museum in Bombay, although its find spot is unknown. U. P. Shah

has dated this image to the late first century B.C.E.or early first century
C.E.,although in light of the most recent dating of the Chausa bronzes
as second century C.E.,the Prince of Wales Parsvanathashould probably
be assigned to the same period.29
Much of our earliest archaeological evidence of Jain cultic practice
comes from Mathuraand dates from the second century B.C.E.through
the third century C.E.30Jain cultic structuresat Mathuraincluded at least
one temple, several shrines, and a stipa.31 One temple (pdsada) is men-
tioned in an inscription of the mid-second century B.C.E. and another
in an inscription from just before the time of Kaniska.32Other inscrip-
tions mention Arhatshrines (devakula)and Arhatsanctuaries(ayatana).33
Most of the archaeological evidence indicates a rich and flourishing cul-
tic life involving the worship of images of Jinas and other Jain deities
(both as carved on two-dimensional plaques known as dyagapatas and
increasingly as carved in three-dimensionalfigures) as well as an exten-
sive but currentlylittle understoodworship of or with various symbols.34
Although Mathurais known for possibly being the place where the Bud-
dha image originated, it seems to have been more of a Jain center than
a Buddhist one in the early centuries B.C.E. and C.E., at least on the evi-
dence of the quantity of extant images, and it is quite likely that the Jain
cult of images predates the Buddhist one.35N. P. Joshi lists 172 images
of Jinas from Mathura.36
The large number of three-dimensionalJina images at Mathura,some
standing but most seated and twenty-eight of fourfold Jinas, indicate the
29 U. P. Shah, "An Early Bronze Image of Parsvanathain the Prince of Wales Museum,
Bombay,"Prince of Wales Museum Bulletin 3 (1952-53): 63-64.
30 For ancient Mathuraas a whole, see the
essays in Mathura: The Cultural Heritage,
ed. Doris Meth Srinivasan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1989). Sonya Rhie Quintanilla has re-
cently restudied both the inscriptional and physical Jain materials from Mathuraand pro-
vided a chronology; her work will be essential in all future studies of Mathura.See Sonya
Rhie Quintanilla, "Emergence of the Stone Sculptural Tradition at Mathura:Mid-Second
CenturyB.c.-First CenturyA.D." (Ph.D. diss., HarvardUniversity, 1999), and "Ayagapatas:
Characteristics,Symbolism, and Chronology,"Artibus Asiae 60 (2000): 79-137.
31 N. P. Joshi,
"Early Jaina Icons from Mathura,"in Srinivasan, ed., p. 332.
32 Debala Mitra, "Mathura,"in Jaina Art and Architecture, ed. A. Ghosh
(New Delhi:
BharatiyaJnanpith, 1974), 1:51-52; and Heinrich Liiders, "A List of Brahmi Inscriptions
from the Earliest Times to about A.D. 400 with the Exception of Those of Asoka," appen-
dix to Epigraphia Indica 10 (1912), inscriptions 93 and 99.
33 Mitra, p. 52; and Liiders, "Brahmi Inscriptions,"inscriptions 78 and 102.
34 Quintanilla, "Ayagapatas,"p. 90.
35 Regarding Mathuraas the place where the Buddha image originated, see J. E. van
Lohuizen-de Leeuw, "New Evidence with Regard to the Origin of the Buddha Image," in
SouthAsian Archaeology 1979, ed. HerbertHartel (Berlin:Dietrich Reimer, 1981), pp. 377-
400. Regarding the quantity of extant images, see J. E. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw, The
"Scythian" Period (Leiden: Brill, 1949), p. 149.
36
Joshi, p. 332.
emphasis laid on formal rites to Jina images. The inscriptions found on

many of the images indicate that patronage of the Jain temples and
shrines came from a wide variety of social classes. The inscriptions, in
language that is remarkablysimilar to image inscriptions from through-
out the medieval period till today, also show that many of the images
were carved or installed at the instruction of mendicants. For instance,
we find inscriptions indicating that an image of the Jina Sambhava was
established (pratasthapitd) by the laywoman Yasa at the urging of the
nun Dhafiisiri, that a Jina image was established by the laywoman Vikata
at the urging (nirvatand) of the monk Vacaka Naganandi, and that a Jina
image was established by the layman Sura at the urging of the monk
Vacaka Arya-Deva.37Dozens of similar examples could be given. In this
elaborate cult of images, therefore, we do not have a lay phenomenon
that has been grafted into the traditionbut rathera phenomenon in which
both laity and mendicants fully participate.38
IMAGE WORSHIP IN JAIN LITERATURE
Literaryevidence of image worship confirms an early date for its begin-

nings. The Svetambara Murtipujakas point to two early canonical
sources that discuss image worship.39These are passages in the Rdya-
pasenaijja (SanskritRajaprasniya) and the Nayadhammakahao(Sanskrit
Jndtrdharmakath).40 In the Rayapasenaijja there is an account of the
worship of a Jina image (jinapadima) in a Jina temple (siddhayatana) by
a multitude of gods. One of the stories given in the Nayadhammakahao
tells, in language very similar to that in the Rayapasenaijja account, of
the worship of a Jina image (jinapadima) in a Jina temple (jinaghara)
by Princess Draupadi. The descriptions of the rite in these passages are
remarkablylike those of the well-known eightfold puja and the related
caitya-vandana and attests to the antiquity of these rites.41The dates of
37 Heinrich Liiders, MathuraInscriptions, ed. Klaus Janert(G6ttingen: van den Hoeck &
Ruprecht, 1961), pp. 45-46, and "Brahmi Inscriptions,"inscriptions 22 and 53.
38 For a similar argument in the case of Buddhism that the mendicants were fully in-
volved in such "popular" cults as image establishment and merit transfer, see Gregory
Schopen, "Archaeology and ProtestantPresuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism"
(n. 25 above), and "On Monks, Nuns and 'Vulgar'Practices: The Introductionof the Image
Cult into Indian Buddhism," in his Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks (n. 25 above),
pp. 238-59.
39 For texts, translation,and discussion, see Paiinyas Kalyanvijaygani,Sri Jinpiuj Vidhi-
Sahgrah, ed. Pt. SobhacandraBharill (Jalor: Sri KalyanvijaySastra-Saiigrah-Samiti,1966),
pp. 13-17.
40 On the Rdyapasenaijja, see P. S. Jaini (n. 15 above), pp. 57-59; and Schubring,Doc-
trine of the Jainas (n. 16 above), pp. 96-97. On the Nayidhammakahao, see Schubring,
Doctrine of the Jainas, pp. 89-92, and his Ndyadhammakahdo:Das sechste Anga des
Jaina-Siddhanta (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literature, 1978).
41 For
contemporarydescriptions of the puja, see Lawrence A. Babb, Absent Lord: As-
cetics and Kings in a Jain Ritual Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996);
these texts, and of passages within texts, are mattersof great uncertainty,
and these particularpassages probably date from as late as the middle of
the first millennium C.E.42Whatevertheir age, these passages do indicate
that in some circles the antiquity of image worship was accepted by at
least the fifth century C.E., and the formulaic and intertextual nature of
these two passages indicates that they quite likely date from early in the
first millennium C.E.
Another early reference to both piij and vandana to Jina images in
Jina temples is found in Vimalasuri'sPaumacariya. While there is great
debate among scholars concerning the date of this text, with opinions
ranging between the first and the fifth centuries C.E., it is by all accounts
the oldest extant Jain puridna,and even the latest of the possible dates
places it as roughly contemporarywith the latest levels of the Svetam-
bara canon.43In a section listing the fruits of various religious actions
(Paiimacariya 32.71-93) are found elements of the full eightfold pijd,
such as bathing the image and offering flowers, incense, and lamps.44
The assumed, offhandmannerof this list indicates that these are all well-
accepted practices by the time of the composition of the Paimacariya.
Archaeological, art historical, and literary evidence tells us, therefore,
that the cult of images was part of the Jain traditionfrom an early date,
certainly from an early enough time that the argument that it was bor-
rowed from the Hindu tradition has been discredited. But a cult of im-
ages does not automatically indicate a theology of bhakti. One could
argue that the image cult is ideologically marginalto an ascetic and men-
dicant core of the tradition. One could further argue that bhakti and
image worship were primarilylay practices in which the mendicants par-
ticipated to a limited extent as a necessary part of their interaction with
the laity, in other words, that mendicants had to install images and com-
pose hymns in returnfor the material supportof food, shelter, clothing,
and other necessities provided by the laity. But, in fact, as will be shown
in the remainderof this article, bhakti was an integral part of the basic
mendicant practice of the early Jain tradition, both Svetambara and
Digambara. Here we need to look at the dvasyakas, the set of six daily
obligatory rituals requiredof all mendicants,that have defined mendicant
John E. Cort, Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 61-99; and Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw,
The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Wor-
ship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). For more information on caitya-vandana,
see Cort, Jains in the World,pp. 64-71.
42 Dhaky ("The Jina Image and the Nirgrantha Agamic and Hymnic Imagery" [n. 2
above], p. 94) has recently dated these two texts as ca. late third century C.E.
43 For a summary of the opinions on the date of Vimalasiiri, see V. M. Kulkarni, The
Story of Rdmain Jain Literature(Ahmedabad:SaraswatiPustakBhandar,1990), pp. 51-59.
44 Hermann Jacobi, ed., Paiimacariya of Vimalasuiri,2d ed., rev. by Muni Punyavijay,
with Hindi trans. by Shantilal M. Vora (Varanasi:PrakritText Society, 1962), pp. 259-61.
practice from the earliest times for which we have evidence until the
present.
VANDANAAND CATURVIM?ATISTAVA
The six avasyakas, or daily obligations, in their Sanskritforms are (1) sa-
mayika, a meditative equanimity that pervades the mendicant'sconduct;
(2) caturvimsatistava, a hymn to the twenty-four Jinas; (3) vandana,
veneration of the mendicant gurus; (4) pratikramana,a rite by which the
mendicant disavows any intention behind improperactions already com-
mitted; (5) pratyakhyana, a rite by which the mendicant disavows any
intention behind improper actions he or she may commit in the future;
and (6) kayotsarga, another form of meditation in which the mendicant
"abandonsthe body."
Scholarship on the Jains has paid insufficient attention to the avasya-
kas. In part, this is due to the lack of fieldwork-basedstudies of the Jain
traditionuntil recently; in other words, because scholars never asked the
mendicants which texts formed the prescriptive basis for their practice,
those texts have been inadequately studied. The problem has been com-
pounded by the nature of the extant textual material itself. On the Di-
gambaraside, the relevant texts have suffered from the same inattention
as most Digambaraliterature.On the Svetambaraside, the Avasyaka lit-
eratureconstitutes a ratherimposing mass of texts composed over nearly
a millennium that are extensively embedded in each other. The focus of
the early scholars on the Svetambaracanonical literature,especially the
eleven Afigas, furtherled them away from the Avasyaka literature.The
one pioneering study on this literature,that of Ernst Leumann, was cut
short by Leumann'sdeath, and the terse style of Leumann'snotes as pub-
lished by Walther Schubring presents a most formidable obstacle to
almost any scholar.45While Leumann's work has been cited in other
studies, the natureof the citations indicates that few if any scholars have
actually tried to work throughLeumann'smonograph.Only in recent years
have Klaus Bruhn and Nalini Balbir begun the dauntingphilological task
of unpacking the layers of the SvetambaraAvasyaka literature.46
45 ErnstLeumann, Ubersicht uber die Avasyaka-Literatur,ed. WaltherSchubring(Ham-
burg: Friedrichsen, DeGruyter, 1934).
46 See in particularNalini Balbir'smagisterialIntroductiongdnerale et traductions,vol. 1
of Avagyaka-Studien(Stuttgart:Franz Steiner, 1993). Her focus, however, is almost exclu-
sively with the ways in which the Avasyaka literaturecontributesto our knowledge of the
Jain and Indian narrativetraditions.This is seen clearly in her "Stories from the Avasyaka
Commentaries,"in The Clever Adultress and Other Stories, ed. Phyllis Granoff (Oakville:
Mosaic, 1990), pp. 17-74. See also two studies by Klaus Bruhn: "Avasyaka Studies I" in
Studien zum Jainismus und Buddhismus: Gedenkschriftfiir Ludwig Alsdorf, ed. Klaus
Bruhn and Albrecht Wezler (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1981), pp. 11-49, and "Five Vows
and Six Avashyakas-the Fundamentalsof Jaina Ethics," Here-Now4U Online Magazine
(1997-2000), available on-line at http://www.here-now4u.de/eng/contents.html.
The daily practice of both Svetambaraand Digambara mendicants is

constructed around these six obligations. The texts in which the obliga-
tions are described, and the rudimentsof the rites given, belong to one of
the oldest strata of Svetambara and Digambara literature. The large
amount of text that is common to both the Svetambaraand the Digam-
bara texts indicates the antiquity of the dvasyakas as dating from before
the gradual crystallization of the Svetambara-Digambarasplit in the
early centuries C.E.47
On the Svetambaraside, the dvasyakas are dealt with at length in the
Avassaya Sutta (Avasyaka Sitra).48 This and the Dasaveydliya Sutta
(Dasavaikalika Sitra) are the two texts studied by all Svetambarmendi-
cants in the liminal period between the two stages of the mendicant ini-
tiation (diksd). In other words, these are the two how-to texts for
Svetambaramendicants.
On the Digambaraside, the most extensive treatmentof the dvasyakas
is in the second-century-c.E.Mildcdra of Vattakera,a text described by
PadmanabhJaini as "the most importantDigambarawork on mendicant
discipline."49There is also a discussion of the dvasyakas in the second
or third century C.E.Niyamasdra (77-158) of Kundakunda,as well as a
general reference to them in his Pavayanasdra (Pravacanasdra) (3.8).50
Such a general reference is also found in the second century C.E.Bhaga-
val Ardhand (Bhagavati Arddhand)of Sivarya (also known as Sivakoty-
acarya).51There is a further general reference to the avasyakas in the
third-century-c.E.TattvdrthaSutra of Umasvati, a text read as authori-
tative by both the Svetambarasand the Digambarasand probablywritten
by an author who predated the clear division into Svetambara and Di-
47 See Leumann for a detailed discussion of the extensive textual parallels.

48 See
Bruhn, "Avasyaka Studies I," for the five textual levels, in both Prakritand San-
skrit, that are embedded in the Avasyaka literature(or, as Bruhn terms it, the "AvaSyaka-
cluster"). These levels are generally studied by Jain mendicants as a single text.
49 P. S. Jaini
(n. 15 above), p. 79.
50 On the date of Kundakunda,see W. J. Johnson, Harmless Souls: KarmicBondage and
Religious Change in Early Jainism with Special Reference to Umdsvdti and Kundakunda
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995), pp. 91-97. M. A. Dhaky has recently argued for a
much later date for Kundakunda,the second half of the eighth century C.E. ("The Date of
Kundakundacarya,"in Pt. Dalsukh Bhai Malvania Felicitation Volume,ed. M. A. Dhaky
and Sagarmal Jain, Aspects of Jainology, vol. 3 [Varanasi:P. V. Research Institute, 1991],
1:187-206). I find his argumentsunconvincing and prefer to stick to the earlier dates.
51 This is
quoted in JinendraVarn., Jainendra Siddhanta Kosa, 2d ed. (Delhi: Bharatiya
Jnfinpith, 1985), 1:279, as verse 116. In the edition of the text by KailgacandraSastri
(Bhagavati Arddhand of Acdrya Sri Sivarya with the Sanskrit Tikd Vijayoddyaof Apard-
jitasuri, ed. and Hindi trans. by Pandit KailascandraSastri [Sholapur:Jain Samskrti Sam-
raksaka Saiigha, 1978]) it occurs as verse 118. Aparajitasiiri on his ca. ninth-century
Sanskrit Vijayodaya commentary on the Bhagavati Aradhand gives a lengthy exposition
on this verse based, according to Sastri ("Prastdvnd,"in ibid., p. 39), on the discussion of
the dvasyakas found in the Muldcdra.
gambara.52The offhand, referential nature of these passages, as well as

Svetambarareferences in the canonical Uttarajjhaya (Uttaridhyayana)
and Bhagavai Viyahapannatti(Bhagavati Vydkhyiprajiapti) Suttas, indi-
cates that the avasyakas comprised a subject that would be so well known
to any mendicant reader that furtherdetails were often unnecessary.
For our purposes, the most importantof the avasyakas is the second,
the caturvimsatistava.Devotional elements are also found in the avasya-
kas of vandana and pratikramana,but the clearest evidence is in the ca-
turvimsratistava.In its earliest form, it is a simple hymn of veneration to
the twenty-four Jinas. However, it early became extended into the rite of
caitya-vandana, or "veneration of the Jina image."
It is not clear when the belief in there being twenty-four Tirthafikaras
in this age emerged. Early Jina images do not bear the ladchanas that al-
low us to distinguish one Jina from another, and so iconography is unre-
liable as a guide for when the tradition of carving all twenty-four Jinas
developed. It is possible to distinguish images of Rsabhanatha(by the
matted hair falling on his shoulders) and Parsvanatha (by the serpent
hood above his head), and such images are found among the earliest im-
ages discussed above. The materialevidence, therefore, allows us to con-
clude only that the idea of multiple Jinas is very early but not necessarily
the canonized list of twenty-four Jinas.
Textual evidence does not provide a clear answer either, although this
is where the concept of there being twenty-four Jinas is first seen. U. P.
Shah says that the list of twenty-four as found in the Kalpa Sutra "is cer-
tainly older than c. 300 A.D." (his dating of the final redaction of the
text).53He also refers to the caturvimsatistavaitself, noting that Svetam-
bara traditionattributesit to Bhadrabahu,who lived 170 years after Ma-
havira'sdemise. (Scholarly consensus, however, rejects this attribution.)
He furthernotes that the twenty-four Tirthafikarasare also mentioned in
the Bhagaval Viyahapannatti.The dating of this large, composite text
is highly problematic; Suzuko Ohira estimates that the cosmographical
sections of the text, which include discussions of twenty-four Tirthan-
karas, were completed in the late fourth or fifth century C.E.54 According
to Maruti Nandan Prasad Tivari, the earliest textual reference to the
52
The latest discussions of the date and authorshipof the TattvarthaSutra and its Bha.sya
are the following: M. A. Dhaky, "Umasvati in Epigraphicaland LiteraryTradition,"in Sri
Nagabhinandanam: Dr. M. S. Nagaraja Rao Festschrift, ed. L. K. Srinivasan and S. Na-
garaju(Bangalore: Dr. M. S. NagarajaRao Felicitation Committee, 1995), pp. 505-22; and
Johnson, pp. 46-47.
53 U. P. Shah, Jaina-Rupa-Mandana(New Delhi: Abhinav, 1987), 1:82.
54 Suzuko Ohira,A Study of the Bhagavatisutra:A Chronological Analysis (Ahmedabad:
PrakritText Society, 1994), pp. 204-7.
twenty-four Tirthafikarasis in the Samavayriga Sutra.55But this text

also contains material from a wide range of time, and much of it might
well date from fairly late in the first half of the first millennium C.E.56We
are left with the conclusions of Shah, although I prefer to be more con-
servative than he does in the antiquity of dates: "It may therefore be
concluded that belief in the twenty-four Tirthafikarasexisted in the be-
ginnings of the ChristianEra and probably dates from at least a century
or two earlier."57
The caturvimsatistavahymn itself in its Svetambaraform is as follows:
I will glorifytheilluminatorsof the world,thecreatorsof thedharma-tirtha,the

Jinas,the Arhats,the twenty-four,the enlightenedones.
Praiseto RsabhaandAjita,to SambhavaandAbhinanda,andto Sumati,to Pad-
maprabhaandto SuparsvaJina,praiseto Candraprabha.
Andto SuvidhiPuspadanta, andto Sitala,Sreyamsa,Vasupijya,to Vimala,and
to Ananta,I praiseJinaDharmaand Santi.
To Kunthuand Ara, praiseto Malli, I praiseMunisuvrataand Nami Jina, to
Ristanemiand Parsvaand Vardhamana. ThusI have praisedthe twenty-four,
who have discardeddirtand impurity,in whomold age and deathhave disap-
peared,the excellentJinas;may they,the Tirthafikaras, be gracefulto me.
May they, the supremeperfectedones (siddhas)of the world,who have been
glorified,venerated,andpraised,give the gain of health[= liberation]and [su-
preme]wisdom, and the best, highest meditativeabsorption(samadhi).May
the perfectedones, purerthanthe moons,moreradiantthanthe suns,morepro-
foundthanthe oceans,give me perfection.58
The hymn is found in its entirety in the Digambara tradition as the

Jina Bhakti. While the tradition attributes this text to Kundakunda,
WaltherSchubringhas convincingly shown that this text in this particu-
lar form was compiled by a later author.59But the antiquity of the hymn
in the Svetambaratraditionindicates that its usage might be equally old
in the Digambara tradition. The Digambara version adds the following
55 Maruti Nandan Pasad Tivari, Jain Pratimd
Vijndn(Varanasi:PargvanathVidyasram
Sodh Saiisthan, 1981), p. 30.
56 See K. K.
Dixit, Jaina Ontology, Lalbhai Delpatbhai Series no. 31 (Ahmedabad:L. D.
Institute of Indology, 1971), p. 8.
57 Shah, p. 82.
58 My translationof Avassaya Sutta 2. For the Prakrittext, see Bhadrabahusvami,
AvaSya-
kaniryukti[Avassayanijjutti], ed. Acarya Anandasagarasuri(Bombay: Agamodaya Samiti,
1916; reprint, Bombay: gri Bherulal Kanaiyalal Kothari Dharmik Trast, 1982), pp. 3-13;
and Muni Punyavijaya and Pt. Amrtlal Mohanlal Bhojak, eds., Dasaveydliyasuttam, Utta-
rajhaydndimand Avassayasuttam (Bombay: gri MahaviraJaina Vidyalaya, 1977), p. 334.
See also Leumann (n. 45 above), pp. 6-7; and R. Williams, Jaina Yoga:A Study of the Me-
diaeval Sravakacdras (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 195-96.
59 WaltherSchubring,"Kundakundaecht und unecht,"Zeitschriftder Morgenlandischen
Gesellschaft 107 (1957): 557-74.
verse at the beginning: "I praise the best of Jinas, the Tirthafikaras,the
omniscient ones, the boundless Jinas, who are praised in the worlds by
the best of people, who are freed from the dirt of karma,who are greatly
wise."60
Essentially the same text is also found in the early Milaicra but col-
lapsed into one verse (7.42). This Digambara text contains parts of the
Svetambaraverses 1, 6, and 7: "May the illuminators of the world, the
creators of the dharma-tirtha,the excellent Jinas, the Arhats, the praise-
worthy enlightened ones, give me the highest wisdom."61
This hymn poses a problem for Jain theologians. According to the un-
derstandingof the ontological natureof the liberatedJina accepted by all
Jains, the Jina is totally nonresponsive, even to the faith-filled petitions
of the Jina's devotees.62 The Jina is defined as vitaraga, one who has
conquered (vita) all passions (raga), even positive passions such as com-
passion, and thus is totally dispassionate. While the Jina is defined as
possessing infinite potential (ananta-virya), the Jina, due to his dispas-
sion, never uses this potential. According to the Jain understanding,to
perform any action, it is necessary first to will to do that action, and it
is precisely any such will that is ruled out by total dispassion. But in this
verse, the individual requests that the Jinas "be graceful to me," "give
the gain of liberation and supreme wisdom, and the best, highest samd-
dhi,"and "give me perfection."63To make any request of the Jinas is con-
sidered to be a nidana, a worldly desire, and therefore a sign of incorrect
faith and understanding.Making a request is proper only when interact-
ing with unliberatedand transmigratingdeities who reside in the celestial
or infernal realms or with fellow unliberatedhumans. Making such a re-
quest of a Jina shows improperfaith and understandingprecisely because
the Jina cannot respond.
This problem has been addressed by the Jain theologians, and it is in
their explanations that the earliest Jain references to bhakti are found.
The DigambaraVattakerain his Miulcdra (7.72-75) explains as follows:
60 The text is in Pt. Kails'candra gastri, ed. Prabhrta Sangraha of Kundakunda(includes

Sanskritgloss and Hindi trans.) (Sholapur:Jain SamskrtiSamraksakaSangha, 1960), p. 154.
61 Pt. Pannalal Soni and Pt.
GajadharalalSrilal, eds., Muldcdra of Vattakera(with San-
skrit Tika of Vasunandi) (Bombay: Manikacandra Digambara Jainagranthamalasamiti,
1921-24), 1:418; and Vattakera,Muldcdra, ed. SiddhantacaryaPt. Kailaicandra Sastri,
Pt. JaganmohanlalSgstri, and Pt. Pannalal Jain Sahityacarya, with Sanskrit Acaravrtti of
Vasunandi and Hindi trans. by Aryika Jfiinmati (Delhi: Bharatiya Jinnapitha, 1984-86).
62 On early Jain definitions of divinity, see Paul Dundas, "Food and Freedom:The Jaina
SectarianDebate on the Natureof the Kevalin,"Religion 15 (1985): 185, where he cites the
gvetambaraBhagavai Viyahapannatti 12.9 as well as Digambarapassages given by Varni
(n. 51 above).
63 Respectively, me pasiyantu, droggabohildham samdhivaramuttamamdentu, and sid-
dhim mama disantu.
Previouslyacquiredkarmais destroyedby bhaktito the excellent Jinas, and

charms(vidyas)and spells (mantras)are successfulthroughthe grace of the
mendicantleader(dcarya).
Passion(raga)fortheArhatsin whompassionhasdisappeared andwhoarewith-
out faults;passionfor the dharma;and for the twelvefoldknowledge(sruta)
[i.e., the twelve Afigas];
and passionfor the dcaryas and mendicants(sramanas)and the very learned
who areendowedwith [correct]conduct;this is the praiseworthypassionfor all
those who have passions.
Forthose whose aims are successfulthroughbhaktidirectedtowardthe Jinas,
that bhakti,even thoughfull of passion, is nonethelessnot a worldlydesire
(nidana).
Vattakera clearly indicates that bhakti directed toward the Jinas is

efficacious in the destructionof karma.He furtherdistinguishes between
bhakti directed toward the Jinas, which can have effects only on the
supramundanepath of purificationthrough the destructionof all karma,
and bhakti directed toward still-living mendicants, which can have ef-
fects within the mundane realm, as seen in the success of charms and
spells, which are efficacious due to good karma. He furtheremphasizes
that even though bhaktiis an emotional, passionate exercise, because this
passion is devoted toward the highest Jain ideal, the Jinas, it is unlike
other, worldly passions that are driven by desire. We see in Vattakera's
discussion an attempt to resolve the paradox between the view that any
form of action contributes to karmic bondage and the physical impos-
sibility of total inaction short of death. Fasting to death in the rite of
sallekhana was, and still is, a highly respected Jain response to this pre-
dicament, but it was appropriateonly at the naturalend of one's life and
was, in any event, not an adequate solution for all people. This paradox
was not unique to the Jains, of course; the contemporaneousdiscussion
in the Bhagavad Gltl of niskama karma, action performed without re-
gard to the fruits of the action, was another attemptto resolve the same
paradox.
A similar, lengthier discussion is found in the SvetambaraAvassaya
Nijjutti (AvasyakaNiryukti) (1094-1101) attributedto Bhadrabahu.The
textual parallels with the Digambaratext indicate that the gloss, like the
rite, is quite old:
"Giveme the benefitof healthandknowledge,andthe highestsamddhi."Why

isn't [saying]this a worldlydesire(nidana)?An alternative[understanding] is
necessary here. If one uttersthis it
bhakti-speechuntruthfully, does not result
in the diminishmentof positivepassion(prema)andnegativepassion(dvesa),
normeditativeabsorption(samddhi),norenlightenment(bodhi).
These speeches give what is given by all the excellent Jinas: the threefold
speech on faith (dar?ana), knowledge (jnina), and conduct (caritra).64
Previously acquiredkarmais destroyed by bhakti of the excellent Jinas, [just as]
charms and spells are successful by veneration (namaskara) of the acarya.
They attain the gain of health and knowledge, and death in meditative absorp-
tion, by supreme bhakti of the excellent Jinas who have destroyed positive pas-
sion and negative passion.
Requesting gain and wisdom and future actions; you will see, O fool, that it will
not be successful here or elsewhere. Requesting gain and wisdom and future ac-
tions; how will you attain wisdom here or there?
Of Jina images (caitya), mendicantlineages (kula), mendicantgroups (gana), and
congregations (sanigha),of dcaryas, and of the Jina'steachings (pravacana), and
the other scriptures(sruta)-progressing on the path toward liberation is done by
bhakti of all of them, just as by striving with asceticism (tapas) and equanimity
(samyama).
The author recognizes that improper bhakti-namely, bhakti moti-

vated by worldly desire-is indeed fruitless. But he stresses that, when
done properly, bhakti is indeed as efficacious in the destruction of karma
as are those practices considered by scholarship to be the hallmarks of
Jain practice-asceticism and equanimity.
Such affirmations of the positive, liberation-oriented power of bhakti
are found elsewhere in the early Jain writings. The Svetambara Uttara-
jjhaya Sutta (29.9) says that through the avasyaka of caturvimsatistava
"the soul attains purity of faith," that is, arrives at that right faith (sam-
yagdarsana) that is one of the three jewels of Jainism.65 Slightly further
on (29.14), the same text says that hymns (Prakrit thava and thui) result
in liberation or, at the minimum, rebirth in a heavenly realm: "By holy
praise and hymns he obtains the enlightenment (bodhi) that consists of
knowledge, faith, and conduct; by obtaining the enlightenment that con-
sists of knowledge, faith, and conduct the soul is liberated (antakiriya),
[or] is born afterwards in one of the Kalpas and Vimanas."66
The Digambara Kundakunda has a lengthy discussion of bhakti in his
Niyamasara. Kundakunda seems less optimistic about the role and benefits
64 These are the three jewels that conjoined make up the Jain path to liberation, the
moksamarga.
65 Jarl Charpentier,ed., Uttaradhyayanasatra[UttarajjhayaSutta] (Uppsala: Appelbergs
Boktryckeri, 1921-22), p. 200.
66 Ibid., 201. The
p. Kalpas and Vimanas are the residences of karmically refined trans-
migrating deities; see TattvarthaSutra 4.17-18. Similar references to bhakti are found
in the Svetambara canon in the Bhagavai Viyahapannatti, Bhattaparinnd Painna, Jam-
buddiva Pannatti, Ndyadhammakahdo,Rayapasenaijja, Thdnhriga,and Uvavai. See Muni
Ratnachandra,An Illustrated Ardha-Magadhi Dictionary (1923; reprint, Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1988), 4:10.
of bhakti than the Svetambaraand Digambaraauthorscited above, since

bhakti according to him is a practice within the realm of worldly relative
knowledge (vyavaharanaya), but nonetheless he does not dismiss bhakti
out of hand. Kundakundaalso expands the objects of bhakti to include
the threejewels of right faith, right knowledge, and right conduct-that
is, the fundamentalsof the Jain path:
A laymanor mendicantwho performsbhaktito rightfaith,knowledge,andcon-

ducthas bhaktileadingto liberation;this is saidby the Jinas.
He whoknowsthe variousqualitiesof theliberatedsoulsandperformssupreme
bhakti to them, is thus described from the relative perspective (vyavahdranaya).
Thesoulwhoestablisheshimselfon thepathto liberationandperformsbhaktiof
liberationattainshis own self as possessingthe qualityof independence.67
Kundakundagoes on to discuss bhakti as a form of yoga, as in fact the

true form of yoga, in words reminiscent of the Bhagavad Gtad:
The mendicantwho has renouncednegativepassion(rdga)andso forthandis

joined in himself is one joined in the bhaktiof yoga. Whatelse is yoga?
Themendicantwhohas eliminatedall mentalmodifications andis joinedin him-
self is one joined in the bhaktiof yoga. Whatelse is yoga?
He has yoga who has abandonedperverseintention,is joined in the metaphys-
ical principles(tattva)enunciatedby the Jains, and has a naturalsentiment
(bhdva)for the self.
Rsabhaandthe otherexcellentJinasthroughperformance of thatbhakti,which
is thebestyoga,haveattainedliberationandbliss.Therefore,performthatbhakti
that is the best yoga. (Niyamasara 137-40)
Immediately following his discussion of bhakti, however, Kunda-

kunda enters into a discussion of the dvasyakas from the absolute
perspective (niscaya naya). This dialectic of relative and absolute per-
spectives as employed by Kundakunda is quite reminiscent of other
South Asian two-truthdoctrines, although it is one of the earliest formu-
lations.68Kundakundasays that the dvasyakas are efficacious only from
the vyavahdraperspective. Karma, he stresses, is destroyed only by the
individual who is not dependent on externals and so is capable of per-
forming truly independent action: "He who is not dependent on others
is said to be capable of action. [This] discipline destroys karma and is
67
My translation of Niyamasdra 134-36. For Prakrittext, see Uggar Sain, ed., Niya-
masdra of Kundakunda(with Sanskrit gloss and English trans.) (Lucknow: Central Jaina
Publishing House, 1931), p. 60.
68 See BansidharBhatt, "Vyavahara-nayaand Niscaya-naya in Kundakunda'sWorks,"in
XVIII. Deutscher Orientalistentag, vom 1. bis 5., Oktober 1972 in Liibeck, Vortrdge,ed.
Wolfgang Voigt, Zeitschrift der Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, suppl. 2 (Wiesbaden:
Steiner, 1974), pp. 279-91.
described as the path to liberation"(Niyamasara 141). The type of bhakti

described above, because it relies on the veneration of externals in the
form of the attributesof the Jinas, is not truly independentand therefore,
from the absolute perspective, is not efficacious: "He who fixes his
thoughts on the qualities and modifications of substances is certainly de-
pendent. This has been said by those strivers who have transcended ig-
norance"(Niyamasara 145). But at the same time, it must be pointed out
that the radical antiritualismof Kundakundawas not the standardJain
understandingof the efficacy of ritual action (kriya). While some later
Digambaras followed Kundakunda,and his writings have influenced the
movements of such later Jains as Banarsidas, Srimad Rajcandra, and
Kanji Svami, his position did not become the dominant one for the Di-
gambarasand was roundly condemned by the Svetambaras.69
The avasyaka of the caturvimsatistava was expanded in both tradi-
tions into the more elaborate rite of the caitya-vandana, which can be
translated with equal validity as "the veneration (of the Jina) in the
temple" and "the veneration of the (Jina) image," since caitya in a Jain
context refers both to the image of the Jina and the temple in which that
image is housed.70 This rite contains, in addition to the hymn to the
twenty-four Jinas, several other hymns, including the Sakra Stava. Ac-
cording to Jain belief, this is the hymn of veneration sung by the unlib-
erated god Indra (another name for Sakra) to Mahavira at the time of
Mahavira'sdescent into his mother's womb.71In its form in the caitya-
vandana, it is almost identical to the version found in the Svetambara
Kappa Sutta (Kalpa Sutra).72This prose hymn consists of a string of ep-
ithets for the Jinas.
Bhakti is also found in the Digambara tradition in the framework of
the ten bhaktis.These are describedin two early Digambaratexts, the Pra-
krit attributedto Kundakundaand the Sanskrit attributedto Pujyapada
69 For these
importantfigures, see Dundas, The Jains (n. 18 above), pp. 165-68, 224-
32; see also pp. 91-94 on Kundakundaand the subsequent Digambara mystical tradition.
Regarding the condemnation by the Svetambaras, see Bhatt, "Vyavahara-naya and
Niscaya-naya in Kundakunda'sWorks,"p. 284, n. 25; Dundas, The Jains, p. 94; and K. K.
Dixit (n. 56 above), pp. 161-62.
70 The caitya-vandana is discussed in Williams (n. 58 above), pp. 187-98. See also
Cort, Jains in the World (n. 41 above), pp. 64-71.
71 The importanceof Indraas providing a paradigmfor the lay Jain devotee is discussed
in Babb (n. 41 above).
72 See MahopadhyayaVinaya Sagar, ed. (and Hindi trans.), Kalpasutra, English trans.
Mukund Lath, 2d ed. (Jaipur: Prakrit Bharati, 1984), pp. 28-33. According to Dhaky
("The Jina Image and the NirgranthaAgamic and Hymnic Imagery"[n. 2 above], pp. 100-
101), this hymn is also found in the Uvavdiya Sutta (Aupapatika Sitra), Ndyddhamma-
kahdo (Jintrdharmakathd), Bhagavai Viyahapannatti(Bhagavati Vydkhydprajnapti),and
Rayapasenaijja Sutta (Rdjaprasniya Sutra), indicating its importance by the time of the
redaction of these texts in the second and third centuries C.E. For translationsof the Sakra
Stava, see Williams, p. 193; and Cort, Jains in the World, pp. 68-69.
(sixth century).73These are a series of verses of devotion focused on

ten objects: (1) the Jinas; (2) the siddhas, or other liberated souls; (3) the
sruta, or sacred texts containing the teachings of Mahavira;(4) caritra,
or conduct; (5) the anagara, homeless mendicants, or yogi; (6) the ac-
arya, or mendicant leaders of the Jain community; (7) nirvana or liber-
ation; (8) the pancaparamesti or pafcaguru, the five supremelords (Jina,
siddha, dacrya, upidhydya [mendicant preceptor], and all other mendi-
cants); (9) Nandisvara, the continent containing fifty-two temples wor-
shipped twice annually by the gods; and (10) Santi, the sixteenth Jina.74
A. N. Upadhye notes that passages of the ten bhaktis, "when carefully
read, remind us of closely similar passages in Svetambara canonical
texts, in their Pratikramanaand Avasyaka Sutras and texts like Pamca-
sutta."75As Upadhye goes on to note, we have thus another stratumof
devotional materialdating from before the period when the traditionwas
differentiatedinto the Digambaraand Svetambarasects. The ten bhaktis
also seem to find a reflection in the Svetambaranotion that the caitya-
vandana liturgy is divided into twelve adhikdras, or specific objects of
devotion.76
Still another reference to bhakti comes from the TattvarthaSutra, a
text accepted by both sects (although read with different commentaries)
and thereforealso belonging to the early period of the Jain tradition.The
Tattvartha(Svetambararecension 6.23, Digambararecension 6.24) refers
to bhakti as being fourfold, directed toward (1) the Arhat, or Jina; (2) the
dcarya; (3) the bahusruta, or highly learned mendicant, essentially a
synonym for upadhyiya, or preceptor; and (4) the pravacana, or Jain
teachings.77This reminds us of the above-mentioned various types of
73 As Schubring (n. 59 above) has shown, these are not by Kundakunda.For the South
Indian Digambara Jains, Kundakundavery early assumed a status of culture creator, not
unlike the status ganikaraassumed for Advaita Vedantins,so that many importantritual and
metaphysical texts were attributedto him. The authorshipof the bhaktis is not an impor-
tant issue for my discussion; it is sufficient that they are old ritual bhakti texts. On the date
of Pujyapada,see Williams, pp. 19-20.
74 As mentioned above, the Jina bhakti is largely the same as the Svetambara catur-
vimsati stava. A. N. Upadhye discusses Kundakunda'sPrakritDasabhatti and Puljyapa's
SanskritDasabhakti("Introduction,"in Kundakundacdrya's Pravacanasara(Pavayanasara),
ed. and English trans. A. N. Upadhye [Bombay: Sri Parama-gruta-Prabhavaka-Mandala,
1935], pp. xxvi-xxix). He notes wide divergences in the number of verses in the various
texts and, further,that the Prakritverses are missing for the last two bhaktis, which exist
only in prose. Sogani (n. 20 above) cites Puijyapada'stext as containing two additional
bhaktis, those of samadhi (meditative absorption) and caitya (Jina temple or Jina image)
(p. 68). See also Shanta (n. 3 above), pp. 498-99; in the context of a discussion of the rite
of diksa or mendicant initiation, she gives a list of thirteenbhaktis, with the additional one
being Vira bhakti, directed toward Mahavira.
75
Upadhye, p. xxviii.
76 See Williams, pp. 187-88.
77 The Svetambaraand Digambara texts of the TattvarthaSutra differ slightly. For the
Svetambara version, see K. P. Mody, ed., TattvarthaSatra and Sanskrit "Svabhasya" of
bhakti enumerated in the Avassaka Nijjutti, as well as the discussion

in the Muldacra (7.73-74) of the six properobjects of passion (raga)-
Arhat, dharma,sruta, ciirya, sramana, and bahusruta:
And passionfor the Arhatis amongthe stainlesspassions,free fromfault;

andpassionfor the dharma,andfor the twelvefoldrevelation[thetwelve
Angas];
andpassionfor the acaryas andthe sramanas,andfor the wise who are
endowedwith conduct;
this is the laudablepassionfor those who arepassionate.
SOME PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS IN THE FORM OF AN EXAMPLE

I have shown above that there is extensive textual, archaeological, and
epigraphicalevidence for the presence of bhakti in the early strataof the
Jain tradition. Bhakti is not extraneous to some ascetic core of the Jain
traditionbut is clearly and unambiguouslyintegratedinto central areas of
both Jain practice and Jain doctrine. The properunderstandingand prac-
tice of bhakti is a matterof debate within the tradition,but the appropri-
ateness of its presence is not contested. There is therefore no basis for
arguingthat bhakti in the Jain traditionis merely a later importationfrom
the Hindu traditions.78
As I stated earlier, however, I am not attemptingto argue that bhakti
originated solely in either the Jain tradition or even in the broader sra-
mana sphere. Rather, my argumentcan be stated simply as follows: the
extensive evidence for bhakti at the early levels of the Jain traditiones-
tablishes that there is no need to depend on the mechanism of borrowing
to account for that bhakti. As a result, we need first to understandbhakti
and related devotional forms as integral parts of the Jain tradition from
the earliest levels available to us and second to include Jains in all dis-
cussions of the history of bhakti in India, both in its earliest phase and in
all subsequent phases.
Umasvdti (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1903-5); for the Digambara version, see
J. L. Jaini, ed. and English trans., TattvarthaSatra of Umasvami(Arrah:CentralJaina Pub-
lishing House, 1920). For a recent synthetic translation, see Nathmal Tatia, trans., That
Which Is: TattvarthaSatra (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994). It is worth noting that
this passage occurs immediately preceding mention of the avasyakas in a discussion of the
causes of the arising of the highly auspicious karma that causes a soul to become a
Tirthaiikara.
78 A similar argumentcan be made for the place of devotional practices and image wor-
ship in the early Buddhist tradition. See Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist
SanskritLiterature(London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1932), p. 31; and Schopen, "Archae-
ology and ProtestantPresuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism"(n. 25 above), and
"On Monks, Nuns, and 'Vulgar'Practices" (n. 38 above).
Let me conclude here with an exercise in interpretationto show how

such an inclusion of the Jains might alter our understandingof bhakti.79
The standardacademic history of bhakti sees its roots in the theistic so-
teriologies of the Bhagavatas, Pasupatas,Paficaratrins,Vaikhanasas,and
Agamic Saivas.80 These early bhakti sects seem to have engaged in
highly ritualized, somewhat secret, and esoteric practices into which the
devotee was progressively initiated. Bhakti in this context was character-
ized by respect and veneration. Out of this milieu in the middle of the
first millennium C.E.there developed in the Tamil country a new form of
more public, fervent, and enthusiastic bhakti devoted to deities such as
Visnu, Siva, and Murugan.This Tamil bhakti movement had strong roots
in earlier shamanistic cults that were centered on rites of divine posses-
sion.81This movement is furtherportrayedas being in conscious oppo-
sition both to the more exclusive and ritualized Brahmanicalcults and to
the formal cultic practices of asceticism and meditation of the Buddhists
and Jains.82This Tamil bhakti is thus seen simultaneously as a continu-
ation of the earlier bhakti cults and as something new, as "no longer rev-
erence for a transcendentdeity, but ecstatic love for an immanentone."83
Let us reconsider this portrayalin the light of the above discussion of
Jain bhakti. I have shown above that bhakti was an integral part of the
Jain practice in the early, undifferentiatedstratum of the Jain tradition
and thus can be dated back conservatively to at least the early centuries
C.E. The standardmodel posits two sources out of which Hindu bhakti
grew: the highly formalized intellectual bhaktiof the elaboratecults such

as the Pasupatas and Bhagavatas and the more spontaneous, emotional
bhakti of the singer-saints such as the Alvars and Nayanars.
But there is another source for bhakti that is left out of this portrait.
Bhakti may well have developed within the context of the mendicant-
based traditionsas a naturalgrowth from guru-vandana,or venerationof
the living mendicant gurus. The ritual language itself indicates this, as
the same term, vandana, is used for veneration of both the present gurus
and the absent Jinas. Within any community that stresses the importance
of the lineage of formergurus as underlyingthe authorityand legitimacy
79 Of course, all historical interpretation involves a degree of speculation, or, in the
words of A. L. Basham, a "controlled imagination" (The Wonder That Was India [New
York: Grove, 1954], p. 44).
80 My discussion here is based on ibid., pp. 328-35; Ramanujan(n. 3 above), pp. 103-69;
and Hardy (n. 7 above), pp. 17-43.
81 On this, see Ramanujan,pp. 117-26; and Glenn Yocum, "Shrines, Shamanism, and
Love Poetry: Elements in the Emergence of PopularTamil Bhakti,"Journal of the Ameri-
can Academy of Religion 41 (1973): 3-17, and Hymns to the Dancing Siva (Columbia,
Mo.: South Asia Books, 1982), pp. 187-94.
82 See esp. in this light Ramanujan;Indira Peterson, Poems to Siva (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1989); and Prentiss (n. 3 above), pp. 68-75.
83 Basham, 330.
p.
of the living gurus, venerationof the living guru easily and naturallycan
expand to incorporateveneration of deceased gurus.84From there, it is a
logical next step to veneration of the founder or founders of the lineage
and to the deification of that founder or founders. In the case of the Jains,
this would be veneration of the Jinas, who not only founded the lineage
but because of their status as simultaneously lineage founders and liber-
ated souls were seen by the Jains as the manifestation of divinity, tran-
scendence, and ultimacy-in short, were seen as God.85
We know from archaeological and inscriptional evidence that there
was an extensive Jain presence in South India in the centuries B.C.E. Sev-
eral dozen inscriptions attest to the presence of a flourishing community
of Jain ascetics in the Madurai area in the second and first centuries
B.C.E. and early centuries C.E.86These inscriptions, in fact, constitute the
earliest lithic evidence in South India.87The inscriptions also attest to
connections between the Jains of the Madurai area and Jains in Sri
Lanka. The evidence for an early Jain presence in Sri Lanka is confirmed
by the Mahavamsa, a Buddhist history of Sri Lanka, written in the fifth
century C.E. but evidently drawing on older written and oral records. In
the Mahdvamsa, we are told that a King Pandukabhaya constructed
houses and temples for Jain mendicants at the capital of Anuradhapura.
Scholars place this King Pandukabhayain the fourth century B.C.E., thus
indicating that the Jains may have been in Sri Lanka that early. There are
other passages in the Mahdvamsa that indicate that the Jains were very
important,for the kings endowed large Jain monasteries in the very cen-
ter of the capital Anuradhapura.Eventually, however, the kings were
84 For the Jain stress on

lineage as underlying authority,see John E. Cort, "The Svetam-
bar MurtipujakJain Mendicant,"Man, n.s., 26 (1991): 549-69; and Paul Dundas, "The
Marginal Monk and the True Tirtha,"in Jain Studies in Honour of Jozef Deleu, ed. Rudy
Smet and Kenji Watanabe(Tokyo: Hon-no-tomosha, 1993), pp. 237-59.
85 Technically speaking, it is inaccurate to describe the Jinas as the "founders" of the
lineage, as the credit for founding the mendicant lineages goes not to the Jinas but to their
ganadharas, or "lineage leaders."In the case of Mahavira,the twenty-fourthand last Jina,
the credit for establishing the mendicant lineage therefore goes to SudharmaSvami (see
Cort, "The gvetambarMurtipujakJain Mendicant,"p. 666). Nonetheless, the Jinas are cred-
ited with establishing (or, more correctly,reestablishing) the fourfold congregation of male
and female mendicants, laymen, and laywomen. It is in this context that they are known as
"Tirthanikaras," "founders of the [four] tirthas,"tirtha here referring to the four wings of
the total congregation. Dayal (p. 33) has similarly argued that bhakti developed in the Bud-
dhist tradition from devotion to the person of the Buddha.
86 See IravathamMahadevan, "Corpusof Tamil-Brahmi
Inscriptions,"in Seminar on In-
scriptions, ed. R. Nagaswamy (Madras:Books [India] Private, 1968), pp. 57-73; A. Ekam-
baranathanand C. K. Sivaprakasam, Jaina Inscriptions in Tamilnadu (A Topographical
List) (Madras: Research Foundation for Jainology, 1987); and A. Ekambaranathanand
M. Satyabhama,"Holy Abodes of the Sramanas,"Jain Journal 24 (1989): 3-14.
87 R. Champalakshmi,"South India,"in Jaina Art and Architecture, ed. A. Ghosh (New
Delhi: Bharatiya Jnanpith, 1974), 1:93.
persuaded to support the Buddhists, and the Jain presence in Sri Lanka
does not seem to have survived far into the Common Era.88
The standardnarrativeof Tamil-Hindurelations in the Tamil country
furtherassumes that Hindu bhakti and image worship arose in opposition
to the emphasis on asceticism of the Jains. In the most recent recitation
of this academic narrative,Karen Pechilis Prentiss favorably cites Pad-
manabhS. Jaini (albeit with a difference in emphasis) as arguing that the
Jains in South India adopted image worship in order better to conform
their religious practice to that of the Hindu majority.89The unwary
reader might easily assume from this argumentthat the cult of temples
and images developed first in the Hindu devotional traditions and then
was adopted by the Jains. But this argumentis not supportedby the ar-
chaeological and inscriptionaldata. We have already seen above that the
cult of images in Mathuraevinces a Jain presence from its very earliest
stages. The same is the case in the Tamil country. Leslie Orr notes that
the earliest inscriptional evidence of Hindu and Jain image worship in
Tamilnadu dates from the sixth century C.E. and that the very earliest
inscription she has encounteredis the mid-sixth century Pallank6yil Jain
copper-plate grant, which records the gift of a village and other land to
the Jain mendicant Vajranandifor the worship of the Jina in a temple in
Kanchipuram.90
Thus we have a Jain presence in South India for somewhere between
500 and 750 years before the rise of the distinctive South Indianforms of
bhakti. We also know that bhakti was an integral part of the practice of
those Jains from at least the early centuries c.E.91The extant evidence
is that the Jains were engaged in the worship of images at least as early
as any of the Hindu sects.92 Now let me repeat: I do not want to ar-
88 See Wilhelm
Geiger, trans., The Mahavamsa, or the Great Chronicle of Ceylon (Lon-
don: Pali Text Society, 1912; reprint,London: Luzac, 1964).
89 P. S. Jaini (n. 15 above), cited in Prentiss, p. 71.
90 Leslie C. Orr,Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: TempleWomenin Medieval
Tamilnadu(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 23, 202, n. 38, quoting T N.
Subramaniam,"Pallankovil Jaina Copper-Plate Grant of Early Pallava Period,"Transac-
tions of the Archaeological Society of South India (1958-59): 41-83. See also A. Chakra-
varti, Jaina Literaturein Tamil(New Delhi: BharatiyaJnanapitha,1974), pp. 143-46; and
Ekambaranathanand Sivaprakasam,pp. 426-27.
91 In addition to the evidence I have presented above concerning bhakti in mendicant
practice, see also the discussion of Jain bhakti and temple worship in the very earliest
Tamil texts in S. N. Kandaswamy,"Jainistic and Buddhistic Literature,"in Literary Heri-
tage of the Tamils,ed. S. V. Subramanianand N. Ghadigachalam(Madras:InternationalIn-
stitute of Tamil Studies, 1981), pp. 247-66.
92 Orr also notes that extant evidence
concerning the modes of worship of images in-
dicates that they were "virtually identical" (p. 23) among Jains, Vaisnavas, and Saivas and
that all three of these groups along with the Buddhists "shared a common religious cul-
ture"(p. 25). She borrows this latter terminology from RichardH. Davis, "The Story of the
Disappearing Jains: Retelling the Saiva-Jain Encounterin Medieval South India,"in Open
Boundaries: Jain Communitiesand Cultures in Indian History, ed. John E. Cort (Albany,
N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 213-24.
gue that Tamil Vaisnava or Saiva bhakti is derived from Jain bhakti. But
to assume that the Jain bhakti is derived from the non-Jain bhakti, or
even that the Jain bhakti had no influence on the non-Jainbhakti, strains
credulity.93
I propose instead a more fluid and less sectarian model for what was
happening in ancient Tamilnadu,a model that I think allows us to make
more sense of the archaeological, inscriptional, and literaryevidence. To
understand ancient Tamil religion and culture, the Jains and the Bud-
dhists must be kept prominently (though not necessarily predominantly)
in the picture. In ancient Tamilnadu,there were Jains, Buddhists, Brah-
mans, non-Brahmans, and others speaking, writing, singing, and per-
forming rituals in Sanskrit, Prakrit,Pali, and Tamil, with cultic foci on
the Jina, the Buddha, Visnu, Siva, Murugan,the goddess, and other dei-
ties. The fact that later Hindu tradition attributesthe Silappadikaramto
a Jain authorand its "sequel,"the Manimekhalai,to his Buddhist friend,
and counts both texts as classics of Tamil literature,indicates the porous
nature of sectarian boundaries in ancient Tamilnadu. Various forms of
bhakti were part and parcel of all these different theological and ritual
components of ancient Tamilnadu,and it was out of such a milieu that
the more consciously sectarian bhakti traditions of the Nayanars and
Alvars arose. While the Saivite Nayanars'scriticisms of the Jains were in
part for their not speaking fluent Tamil and for engaging in antisocial as-
cetic practices, I would argue that they were also in part over the proper
definition and practice of bhakti.94The Nayanars and Alvars did not dis-
agree with the Jains (and Buddhists) over whetherbhakti was appropriate
religious behavior; rather, they disagreed over the proper performance
and expression of bhakti. If we view bhakti as lying along a continuum
from sober veneration to frenzied possession, as I argued at the outset of
this article, then the Jains and Buddhists (as well as those Saiva and Vais-
nava cults that focused on elaborate bhakti rituals encoded in Sanskrit
Agamas) lay at one end and the Nayanars and Alvars (as well as cults
based on possession by deities such as Muruganand the goddess) lay at
the other end. Since the Jains define the Jina as residing in the totally
transcendentrealm of liberation at the top of the universe, and therefore
deny the possibility of any form of real presence, they have always been
highly suspicious of practices that in any way approachpossession, for
that possession, by definition, is by an inferior, transmigratingbeing. The
argumentsin favor of devotion to Siva expressed by the Nayanar Appar,
93 In all fairness,I mustaddthatrecentscholarsof Tamilbhaktihaveshownan aware-

ness of the problemscausedby neglectingto keep the JainsandBuddhistsfirmlyin the
picture.See, amongothers,Davis;Orr;IndiraPeterson,Poemsto Siva(n. 82 above),pp. 10-
11, and"Sramanas againstthe TamilWay:Jainsas Othersin TamilSaivaLiterature," in
Cort,ed., pp. 163-85; andRamanujan (n. 3 above),p. 140, n. 42.
94 Peterson,Poemsto Siva,p. 10, and"Sramanas againstthe TamilWay."
who was previously a Jain mendicant, were argumentsfor bhakti against

asceticism, but they can also be seen as argumentsfor emotional bhakti
against venerational bhakti. I would assume that despite doctrinal argu-
ments and disagreements,and no-holds-barredstruggles for royal patron-
age, there was continued interaction among these different strands of
bhakti for many centuries.95We need to think in terms of mutually inter-
penetrating fields of influence rather than unidirectional lines of influ-
ence in the history of bhakti in South India, and in India as a whole. In
a similar vein, Paul Dundas has commented that studies of late medieval
North Indian sants regularly omit all mention of the contemporaryJain
poets such as Banarsidas and Dyanatray.96His pointed remark,"Failure
to evaluate these individuals and their writings must invariably disfigure
any account of this period,"is equally valid for any place and time where
there have been Jains, such as ancient Mathura, classical Tamil Nadu,
medieval Karnataka, medieval western India, and much of modern
India.97
This essay is a prolegomena to a much-needed extensive survey of
bhakti within the Jain tradition. But this preliminary investigation into
Jain bhakti does lead to three conclusions. First, scholars should not treat
bhakti as peripheralto the Jain tradition but instead start to see it as an
essential element of that tradition. Second, scholars need to include the
Jains as essential elements in the history of bhakti in South Asia. Finally,
we need to broaden our definition of bhakti to include the full range of
practices and attitudes termed "bhakti"within all of the South Asian re-
ligious traditionsand so develop an understandingof bhakti as a central
conceptual category for comparative and historical studies within south
Asia that is at once more nuanced and more generalized.
Denison University
95 A point also made by Davis.

96 On the former, see RavindraKumarJain, Kavivar Banarsidas (Delhi: BharatiyaJfian-
pith Prakasan, 1966); and MukundLath, trans., Ardhakathanaka:Halfa Tale (Jaipur:Ra-
jasthan PrakritBharati Sansthan, 1981). On the latter, see John E. Cort, "Dyanatray:An
Eighteenth CenturyDigambarMystical Poet,"in Essays in Jaina Philosophy and Religion,
ed. Marek Mejor and Piotr Balcerowicz (Warsaw: Instytut Orientalistyczny Uniwersytet
Warszawski;Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2002).
97 Dundas, "MarginalMonk and the True Tirtha"(n. 84 above), p. 237.

Bhakti in Early Jain

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Bhakti in the Early Jain Tradition: Understanding Devotional Religion in South Asia

Author(s): John E. Cort

Almost all scholarship on the Jains has approachedJain bhakti as merely

This portraitof the Jain tradition,I argue, is extremely misleading. In

borrowedby Jains and Buddhists is an importanttask. The evidence pre-

THE STANDARD PORTRAYALOF BHAKTI AND DEVOTION

I believethatthis worshiphadnothingto do withoriginalBuddhismor Jainism,

Jacobi's insistence that image worship (and, by extension, bhakti) was

article he published on the Jains was an edition and German translation

It is no doubtto be ascribedto the influenceof the laity thatthe atheisticJaina

ll HermannJacobi, "Zwei Jaina-Stotra,"Indische Studien 14 (1876): 359-91, and "Die

With the notable exception of the recent scholarship of M. Whitney

portrayalof the Jains and so has distortedthat portrait.Even those schol-

EARLY INSCRIPTIONALAND ARCHAEOLOGICALEVIDENCE FOR

Wales Museum in Bombay, although its find spot is unknown. U. P. Shah

emphasis laid on formal rites to Jina images. The inscriptions found on

IMAGE WORSHIP IN JAIN LITERATURE

Literaryevidence of image worship confirms an early date for its begin-

The daily practice of both Svetambaraand Digambara mendicants is

47 See Leumann for a detailed discussion of the extensive textual parallels.

gambara.52The offhand, referential nature of these passages, as well as

twenty-four Tirthafikarasis in the Samavayriga Sutra.55But this text

I will glorifytheilluminatorsof the world,thecreatorsof thedharma-tirtha,the

The hymn is found in its entirety in the Digambara tradition as the

60 The text is in Pt. Kails'candra gastri, ed. Prabhrta Sangraha of Kundakunda(includes

Previouslyacquiredkarmais destroyedby bhaktito the excellent Jinas, and

Vattakera clearly indicates that bhakti directed toward the Jinas is

"Giveme the benefitof healthandknowledge,andthe highestsamddhi."Why

The author recognizes that improper bhakti-namely, bhakti moti-

of bhakti than the Svetambaraand Digambaraauthorscited above, since

A laymanor mendicantwho performsbhaktito rightfaith,knowledge,andcon-

Kundakundagoes on to discuss bhakti as a form of yoga, as in fact the

The mendicantwho has renouncednegativepassion(rdga)andso forthandis

Immediately following his discussion of bhakti, however, Kunda-

described as the path to liberation"(Niyamasara 141). The type of bhakti

(sixth century).73These are a series of verses of devotion focused on

bhakti enumerated in the Avassaka Nijjutti, as well as the discussion

And passionfor the Arhatis amongthe stainlesspassions,free fromfault;

SOME PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS IN THE FORM OF AN EXAMPLE

Let me conclude here with an exercise in interpretationto show how

grew: the highly formalized intellectual bhaktiof the elaboratecults such

84 For the Jain stress on

93 In all fairness,I mustaddthatrecentscholarsof Tamilbhaktihaveshownan aware-

who was previously a Jain mendicant, were argumentsfor bhakti against

95 A point also made by Davis.

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