Pratikraman

Pratikraman means "to turn back" — to return from where one has strayed to where one undertook to stand. It is the central rite of Jain practice: a structured review of one's own conduct over a defined period, followed by confession, repentance, and a resolution against repetition.

Most Jains encounter it once a year, as Samvatsari Pratikraman on the last day of Paryushan. Ascetics perform it twice every day.

What it is for

Jain doctrine holds that karma is matter that adheres to the soul through action, speech and thought, and that it can be shed. Pratikraman is one of the means of shedding it. The reasoning is precise: karma bound through carelessness is loosened by attention, and karma bound through a fault repeated without noticing is loosened by noticing.

This is why the rite is so specific and so long. A general admission of imperfection changes nothing. The liturgy walks through the vows one by one and names the particular ways each may have been violated — which forces the practitioner to check each against their actual conduct rather than skip to a comfortable summary.

The six avashyakas

Pratikraman is built from six obligatory practices, the shad-avashyaka. Performed in order, they take the practitioner from settling the mind to committing to the period ahead.

The five kinds

Pratikraman is named for the period it reviews. The longer the interval, the longer and more thorough the rite.

• Devasi — performed in the evening, reviewing the day just passed.
• Rai — performed at dawn, reviewing the night.
• Pakkhi — fortnightly, on the fourteenth day of each lunar fortnight.
• Chaumasi — every four months, at the turn of each season.
• Samvatsari — annual, on the last day of Paryushan. This is the minimum: a Jain who performs pratikraman only once in the year performs this one.

Samvatsari Pratikraman

The annual form runs for several hours, typically beginning in the afternoon and continuing into the evening, and it is the one occasion when the hall is full. It covers the whole year, and it is exhaustive by design — transgressions against each of the twelve vows of a householder, against right faith and right knowledge, against the restraint of the senses, and against the five classes of one-sensed beings.

It ends with kshamapana: forgiveness asked of every living being and granted to every living being. That is the point at which Michhami Dukkadam is said, and it is the reason the phrase carries weight — it comes at the end of hours of specific accounting, not at the start.

How it is performed

Practically, pratikraman is conducted in a group, led by an ascetic or an experienced layperson, with the congregation reciting in Ardhamagadhi Prakrit — the language of the Agamas. Participants sit on a woollen mat (katasanu), keep a muhpatti — a small cloth held before the mouth to avoid harming airborne life while speaking — and use a charavalo, a soft brush, to clear the ground before sitting or moving. Some steps are performed standing, some seated, some in prostration.

Many participants do not understand the Prakrit word for word, and this is a long-standing subject of discussion within the community. The traditional position is that the recitation is a container and the reflection is the content: the words carry a person through the structure, but the actual work — recalling what one did, and meaning the repentance — happens in the practitioner's own language, inwardly. Books with the text alongside a translation are now widely used, and many sanghs run explanatory sessions before Paryushan for exactly this reason.

Starting

Pratikraman is normally learned by attending rather than by reading. Most sanghs hold practice sessions in the weeks before Paryushan, and the annual Samvatsari Pratikraman is designed to accommodate people doing it for the first time. A beginner is not expected to know the sequence, keep up with the Prakrit, or perform the postures correctly; sitting through it with attention is the whole of what is asked.