SATRUNJAYA is an ancient Jain place of pilgrimage as it
was here that the first Tirthankara, Rsabha, as well as his chief
follower, is said to have reached moksa. Many hundreds of temples and
smaller shrines are contained within the nine walled enclosures. Although
most of them are modern, dating for the great part from the nineteenth
century, there is a long history to the site and traditional accounts
speak of sixteen restorations going back into far antiquity. A new temple
of Rsabha replaced the old one in the mid-twelfth century and seven
shrines were placed in front of it in 1231 by Vastupala. Some of the
temples can trace their origins, if not their present form, back to the
tenth century. Unfortunately Satrunjaya suffered much destruction during
the Muslim conquests in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but
rebuilding took place after 1500 and in 1582 the Emperor Akbar formally
conveyed to the Jains the land which they occupied here. Some of the
larger temples are truly magnificent with their high sugar loaf shaped
domes or spires, a typical feature of Jain temple architecture, whilst the
smaller ones have often a simple and impressive intimacy. Temple building
has not ceased and a new temple complex constructed in the 1970s can bear
comparison with the earlier ones. Rich ornamentation and statuary abound
and demonstrate the skill of the stone carvers. From the late seventeenth
century Satrunjaya became more and more important. As pilgrims flocked
here guide books were written for them, detailing the routes by which the
pious pilgrim may visit and pray before the many images. On a certain date
every year pilgrims to the number of nearly 20,000 undertake a twelve-
mile round trip: the hardship is great but the bliss experienced makes it
well worthwhile. For the very hardy a twenty-four mile route can be
walked. Special ceremonies are held on a number of dates in the year.
Certain prayers, remembrances and rituals are laid down for the pilgrim.
Great merit is achieved by the pilgrimage to Satrunjaya, by fasting and
worshipping there (or even by the attempt to get there if one does not
reach it), greater merit, it is said, than at many of the other great
places of Jain pilgrimage.
The places which we have mentioned are all in the
northern half of India but south India has its great pilgrimage centers as
well. The most famous is SRAVANA BELGOLA, sixty- two miles from Mysore.
Here on a hill 470 feet above the plain, and reached by nearly five
hundred steps, stands the colossal statue of Bahubali, fifty-seven feet
high, twenty- six feet across the shoulders, cut from solid rock around
the year 980 A.D., with a surrounding cloister added in 1116. It is the
biggest free-standing monolithic statue in the world. Bahubali, or Gommata,
was the son of Rsabha, the first Tirthankara. It is said that he stood so
deep in meditation that the climbing plants grew over him. The statue
represents him nude, evidence of total renunciation of worldly goods, with
his limbs entwined by creepers. There are other statues of Bahubali in
south India but this is by far the largest and it is a major center of
pilgrimage for Jains from north as well as south India. In a Jain temple
the consecrated image is ritually bathed every day as part of the worship
paid to it. The statue at Sravana Belgola is so huge that this ritual can
be carried out only on the feet of the image. At certain intervals
however, of between twelve and fifteen years, a great structure of
scaffolding is erected and the image is ceremonially showered from pots of
water mixed with sandalwood, coconut and sugar. Half a million people
attended the ceremony when it was held in 1967. When it was held again in
1981 it had a special significance as marking the thousandth anniversary
of the consecration of the statue.
Pilgrimage to sacred places is part of the tradition of
practically every religion in the world. The hardships of the journey
discipline the body, the company of fellow pilgrims strengthens religious
faith. To pray and worship at a site made holy by tradition or
consecration or the worship of generations of the faithful, to stand at
the place where great religious leaders and saints once stood, all these
are inspiring and uplifting. The soul receives merit, the mind receives
peace. By different people a pilgrimage will be interpreted differently.
Some simple people are content to lose themselves in the awe of the
occasion, to follow without taxing thought the rituals and prayers. Others
may wish to take a more intellectual view, to dismiss the more miraculous
legends, or at least to see them as pious and educative stories, rather
than as literal truth. But few indeed can undertake a journey to the
sacred places and come away unmoved.
Pilgrimages and temples are a living part of Jain
religion, not some moribund tradition of the past. In Leicester, in
England, a new temple is being constructed with, for the first time in the
Western world, fully consecrated images of the Tirthankara. They will be
housed in a splendid carved stone shrine inside the Jain Center. This work
is being made possible by the contributions of Jains from all over the
world, to provide a focus for pilgrims who will come to pray before the
three images of Shantinatha, Parsva and Mahavira, from Britain, from
Europe, from India, and indeed from all parts of the world.
