Abstract
This study shows how Varanasi, a site that many people understand to be a sacred Hindu city, has been made “Jain” through its association with the lives of four of the twenty-four enlightened founders of Jainism, the jinas or tīrthaṅkaras. It provides an overview of the Jain sites of worship in Varanasi, focusing especially on how events in the life of the twenty-third tīrthaṅkara Pārśva were placed in the city from the early modern period to the present day in order to bring Jain wealth and resources to the city. It examines the temple-building programs of two Śvetāmbara renunciants in particular: the temple-dwelling Kuśalacandrasūri of the Kharataragaccha (initiated in 1778), and the itinerant Ācārya Rājayaśasūri of the Tapāgaccha (b. 1945). While scholars and practitioners often make a strong distinction between the temple-dwelling monks (yatis) who led the Śvetāmbara community in the early modern period and the peripatetic monks (munis) who emerged after reforms in the late nineteenth-century—casting the former as clerics and the latter as true renunciants—ultimately, the lifestyles of Kuśalacandrasūri and Rājayaśasūri appear to be quite similar. Both these men have drawn upon the wealth of Jain merchants and texts—the biographies of Pārśva—to establish their lineage’s presence in Varanasi through massive temple-building projects.
Highlights
PadmāvatīBhelūpur has been understood as Pārśva’s birthplace since at least the sixteenth century, when Varanasi, under Mughal rule, became a destination for traders and brahmin intellectuals, and the area around Chowk became a center for Jainism in the nineteenth century, when an increasing number of Jain merchants migrated to the city and settled around the main marketplace
Varanasi, focusing especially on how events in the life of the twenty-third tırthaṅkara Pārśva were placed in the city from the early modern period to the present day in order to bring Jain wealth and resources to the city
This shrine, inside the Śvetāmbara Cintāman.i Pārśvanāth temple near Rām Ghāt.,1 celebrated its 200-year anniversary in March of 2014,2 and it is said to mark the exact spot where the twenty-third tırthaṅkara Pārśva saved a pair of snakes from a tortuous death inside the fires of an immoral ascetic
Summary
Bhelūpur has been understood as Pārśva’s birthplace since at least the sixteenth century, when Varanasi, under Mughal rule, became a destination for traders and brahmin intellectuals, and the area around Chowk became a center for Jainism in the nineteenth century, when an increasing number of Jain merchants migrated to the city and settled around the main marketplace To fashion this new settlement as “Jain” in the nineteenth century, Kuśalacandrasūri linked the story of Pārśva saving the snakes to his residence on the Ganges to attempt to transform Rām Ghat., a location that found its original importance as a home for merchants, into an ancient, mythical space belonging to the Jain community. Various lineages, has found success with his Bhelūpur temple, reorienting the focus of Jain worship away from the magnificent former home of Kuśalacandrasūri
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