Ocean of Compassion (Elucidative Reading By Late Shri Shubhkaran Singh Bothra)

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The Tirthankaras in Jainism occupy a higher position whence they come to the world for the reform of the dharma. They concede the earnest devotion, submit to the suppliants and fulfil their all desires. Jaina devotees thus tend to take a final resort to such divine personalities, install them in images, praise their qualities in words and worship them as gods, in the same manner as the followers of the Brahmanical or the Hindu faith. Praises of divinities in rhymes thus constituted a new literary unit containing stutis (stavas/stavanas or prarthanas; prayers/hymns).

We come across one hymn (Virathui - 29 vss.) of the earliest time in the Suyagada 1.6, two hymns (Dev'indatthaya - ca. 300 vss. and Virathhay - ca. 43 vss.) in the 10-Painnas of considerably later date, so also in this context, the 6 Avassaya (Formulas) or at least the 2nd Avassaya, called Cauvisathau (7vss.), which also belongs to a still later period. They may be considered as the hymns of historical importance in the canonical literature of the Shvetambaras. All those hymns in Prakrit are of very general nature.

But the literary composition of hymns in Prakrit and Sanskrit started late and continued until recently in Jainism. They differ in meters, in number of verses they contain, in their 'objects' of invocation (one or more than one Tirthankaras). Some of the hymns are of a little inferior character, more inclined to sounds - alliteration, pun or paronomasia and the like, which mar the normal emotional appeals and somehow lack the natural style of composition. But apart from such negligible instances, this type of literature as a whole is a rich store of hymns of conventional eulogies with full of devotional importance and poetic values. Its study brings forth some strings of historical information regarding religions and rituals, cosmography and cosmology, and the social and cultural traits as well. The study of this field of literature is still in its infancy.

The Mahaviraprarthanashataka ("An Entreaty to the Mahavira in 100 verses") belongs to the stuti-literature of our time. It is composed by Pt. Haragovind Das Sheth. It is a shataka (one containing 100 verses), but in fact, it ends in vs. 101, since the number 100 is not an auspicious one! The hymn is addressed to Mahavira (great hero), called Vardhamana - the last and the 24th Tirthankara. His connection with the Chanda-kaushika legend is referred to in vs. 6 and the name of his disciple Gautama appears in vs. 8. (Otherwise, in absence of vs. 6, it is difficult to decide on the basis of the remaining verses whether the author really invokes Mahavira! In the last two verses (100-101), the author supplies some relevant data. In vs. 100, he mentions the date (2nd day of the bright half of the month of Magha in the Vikrama samvat 1994; i.e. ca. January 1937) and the place (village Rajagriha, the present Rajgir in Bihar) of the composition. In vs. 101, he supplies additional information that his name is Haragovind, his father's name: Trikamacandra, his family name : Shresthin (Sheth) and his native place : Rajadhanyapura - the present Radhanpur, a town situated in the south-west of the Banaskantha district (Gujarat State).

Pt. Haragovind Sheth V 1945-1997 (1888-1940 AD), a Jaina by birth and faith, was a versatile scholar of Sanskrit and Prakrit. He started his scholarly activities of editing and publishing some rare and important Jaina texts soon after he achieved academic titles: Tirtha in Indian Logic (Nyayatirtha) and Sanskrit-Prakrit Grammar (Vyakarana-tirtha). In 1910-1914, he took up and completed a huge task of editing the Visesavassaya-Bhasa of Jinabhadra (ca. 7th cent. AD) with his colleague, Pt. Bechardas Doshi of Gujarat. He decided to respond to an acute academic want of a Prakrit Dictionary and soon undertook, on his own accord, another gigantic project of compiling a Prakrit-Hindi Dictionary - the Paia-Sadda-Mahannavo (`Great Ocean of Prakrit Words'). The Dictionary is a result of his talented efforts of more than ten successive years which he single-handedly and untiringly devoted to its compilation without anybody's assistance! As such, his name and fame crossed even the mahannava - the great ocean - and reached places far beyond the Indian borders. His contribution to the field of Prakrit studies earned many valuable opinions of scholars from abroad, such as - Ernst Leumann (Germany), Moriz Winternitz (Austria), F. W. Thomas (England), Giuseppe Tucci (Italy), etc.; and so also from India, such as - S. K. Chatterji, B. M. Barua, Vidhushekhar Bhattacharya, V. S. Agarwal, etc. But unfortunately not all the publications of this great Pundit of India have so far been brought to light. It may be due to negligence of the scholars and to some extent due to inadequate funds. His publications deserve reprints, if necessary, and should be easily available to scholars.

Mr. Surendra Kumar Bothara should be credited for an initiative in this direction of bringing into light one of the unpublished works of Pt. Haragovind Sheth. It is a hymn, entitled: Sri Mahaviraa prarthana-sataka, which is referred to above with a purpose of giving concisely an idea about its frame-work. It is composed in comprehensive Sanskrit, but with some Nyaya (Indian Logic) intricacies and grammatical peculiarities, which the author has blended in it to demonstrate his mastery over the subject. Mr. Bothara's Hindi rendering of the hymn and an elaborative Hindi commentary on it, both come to the rescue of the readers who are not well versed in Sanskrit or the Nyaya techniques. His attempt is rational and commendable.

My initial encounter with Pundit Haragovind ji's Sri Mahavira Prarthana Satakam came as a result of my friendship with Shri Surendra Kumar Bothara of Jaipur. During the academic year 1990-91 I was residing in Jaipur while conducting research on popular Jainism. I was introduced to Shri Bothara by a mutual friend who knew of our common interests. Shri Bothara assisted-me in my research in ways too numerous to mention here, and in the course of our many discussions of Jain matters, I came to know of Pundit Haragovind ji's stuti and also something about the special relationship between him and the Bothara family. At that time, Shri Bothara was in the final stages of preparing his own Hindi translation of the stuti and commentary for publication, and he expressed interest in producing an English version as well. I felt then, and continue to believe, that there is much of interest to an English-reading public in both the stuti itself and the commentary, and I was happy indeed to assist Shri Bothara in this endeavour. My own role was minor; I served as a sounding-board in our many discussions of the text and provided a degree of editorial assistance.

Taking the stuti and the commentary as a unified document, it seems to me that one of its most interesting features is the manner in which Pundit Haragovind ji and his commentator explore the implications of a tension central to the Jain Dharma and the Jain sense of the sacred. This tension anises from two seemingly incompatible facts. The first is a fact of doctrine: the Jain insistence on a complete separation between the world and the ultimate locus of sacredness, the Vitaraga. The second is psychological: the yearning of men and women of a certain temperament for some kind of real spiritual connectedness with this selfsame figure. As we see in the alai, this tension is creative, not destructive. The stuti is addressed to Lord Mahavira, although for the most part it lacks references singling out Mahavira from the other Tirthankaras. Largely, one might say, it addresses the Vitaraga generically. And who is the Vitaraga? He is the Tirthankara, a great spiritual being who achieved liberation himself and taught the pads of liberation to others. He is a victor Viola), someone who, by eradicating utterly all forms of desire (raga) and aversion (dvesh), has completely conquered the des that hind the soul to the world of endless death and rebirth. Completely unencumbered by karmic matter, he abides in omniscient bliss in Siddha loka at the apex of the universe. He is, in the deepen possible sense of the expression, self-sufficient. He is entirely cut off from the joys and sorrows with which the denizens of samara are familiar. And he has no connection or relationship whatsoever with the beings or happenings of this world.

Now this is the crux of the matter. Given his complete disengagement from the world, the Vitaragds status as an object of worship is obviously somewhat ambiguous. The ambiguity is mitigated so long as his worship is conducted in a purely representative or imitative mode a worshipper may symbolically represrnt or enact the Vitaraga's qualities, as is done in the Astaprakari puja, even though the Vitaraga is, himself, completely inaccessible to acts of worship. But for a certain type of religious sensibility this is not quite enough. Such a person longs for some kind of actual contact with the object of his or her devotion, and this clearly presents difficulties when the worshipped being is utterly removed from any form of connection or interaction with worshippers.

It is true, of course, that this does not pose a problem For all Joins. For many, perhaps most, the devotional impulse finds natural avenues of expression without regard to the obstacles to which doctrine gives rise. And this is surely not to be denigrated. For some individuals, however, matters are not so simple, Pundit Haragovind Ji vets a man of powerful intellect and vast learning. He knew well the theological difficulties inherent to any farm of Jain devotionalism. But he was also a spiritual personality of the devotional sort, a man in whom the impulse to connect with the divine ran too strongly to be denied. In this perspective, his stuti can be seen as an expression of a certain spiritual struggle, one that was clearly victorious in the end. He confronts, and finally transcends, the hesitations of orthodoxy. The stuti projects a devotional vision in which the author's sense of personal connectedness with the Vitaraga is vindicated, and this is done in a way that is intellectually as well as emotionally satisfying.

The intelligibility of the author's vision depends on the full range of connotations of certain key terms, and these connotations may not always be obvious in English translation. Foremost among these terms is karuna, a word that is central to the snots message. Karuna carries the basic meaning of 'compassion', and is so rendered in this translation. But if one examines closely the way the word is actually employed (in this text, at least), one sees that in wider meaning is not quite congruent with the English sense of the term. To an English-speaker, compassion is, first, an emotion; and second, it is an emotion that establishes or modifies a relationship between a subject and an object. Someone, we normally say, feels compassion for someone else. Very different however, is the Vitaraga's karuna. To begin with, it can hardly be said to be an emotion, for the Vitaraga is beyond emotion of any kind. And yet the devotee nevertheless experiences himself as the object of compassion and feels within himself the emotion that is the affective reciprocal of another's compassion. Moreover, this is a compassion that is universalised; like the rain, as the poet says, it falls on land and ocean, on rich man and beggar. It is not 'for' someone in particular (although the devotee may experience himself as its particular object); it is for everyone in general, all the suffering beings of the universe.