Snatra Puja

Snatra Puja is the ceremonial bathing of a Jina image, and it is the rite with which most Murtipujak Svetambara temple occasions begin. What is being enacted is specific: the moment, in Jain cosmology, when a Tirthankara is born and Indra descends with the assembled gods, carries the newborn to the summit of Mount Meru, and bathes him with water brought from every ocean and river in the world.

The worshippers are not spectators to that scene. They are standing in for the gods. The image on the snatra stand is the child, the kalashas in their hands are the vessels Indra's company carried, and the water they pour is the water of the kshirasamudra. Understanding that is the difference between watching an elaborate ritual and following one.

What the janma-kalyanak is

Jain tradition marks five kalyanaks — auspicious events — in the life of every Tirthankara: chyavan (conception), janma (birth), diksha (renunciation), kevalgyan (omniscience) and nirvana (final liberation). The second, the birth, is described in the Kalpa Sutra and in the Agamas at length.

At the birth, the thrones of the Indras are said to tremble. Sixty-four Indras descend. Shakra, chief among them, takes the infant to Mount Meru, seats him on a throne, and the gods bathe him with a vast quantity of pure water carried in golden kalashas — the janmabhishek. It is important to the Jain reading that this is homage, not consecration. The gods are not conferring anything on the Tirthankara; they are recognising what he already is. Jainism has no creator, and the Indras of its cosmology are themselves unliberated souls in a favourable birth, senior to humans in power and junior to them in prospects, because liberation is attainable only from a human birth.

The shape of the ceremony

The Snatra Puja most commonly performed today is the composition attributed to Pandit Virvijayji, and it is sung rather than recited — a sequence of verses in Gujarati and Prakrit that the whole assembly carries together, with the ritual actions falling on specific lines.

In outline it runs as follows.

• Preparation and purification. Participants bathe, wear clean unstitched clothes reserved for puja, and tie an ashtapad cloth over the mouth so that the breath does not fall on the image. Nothing is brought that was not prepared for the purpose.
• Invocation. The Navkar Mantra, then verses inviting the gods and establishing the ritual space as Mount Meru.
• Kalash sthapana. The kalashas are filled and set. The verses at this point name the waters being brought — the enumeration is the whole point of the stanza, and it is what makes the vessel in the hand stand for an ocean.
• Abhishek. The bathing proper. Water first, then ksheerabhishek with milk, then water again to conclude. Each participant pours in turn; in a large ceremony this takes some time, and the singing continues throughout.
• Ashta prakari puja. The eight substances offered in fixed order — water, sandalwood paste, flower, incense, lamp, rice, sweet and fruit — each with its own meaning, set out below.
• Aarti and mangal divo. The lamp ceremony that closes the rite, followed by the shanti kalash.

The eight offerings and what each one means

The ashta prakari puja is not eight arbitrary gifts. Each substance is read as renouncing something, and the sequence moves outward from the body to the whole of what a person can want.

The rice figure drawn during akshat puja deserves attention because it compresses a great deal of doctrine into a diagram anyone can draw. The swastika — an ancient Indian auspicious symbol, used in Jainism for millennia and unrelated to its twentieth-century European appropriation — has four arms for the four gatis, the states into which a soul may be reborn: heavenly being, human, animal, and hellish being. Above it, three dots for right faith, right knowledge and right conduct: the way out. Above those, a crescent with a dot for siddhashila, where liberated souls reside. Drawn in order, the figure is the entire Jain path in one gesture.

Who performs it, and who does not

Snatra Puja is a Murtipujak practice. Sthanakvasi and Terapanth Svetambara Jains do not venerate images and therefore do not perform it at all — a difference of long standing, described in Svetambara Jainism. Digambara Jains perform their own abhishek of Jina images, with a comparable rationale and a different liturgy.

Within Murtipujak practice, Snatra Puja opens most larger occasions: pratishtha (the consecration of a new image or temple), temple anniversaries, festival pujas, family observances marking a vow completed, and the Siddhachakra Mahapujan of Navpad Oli. It is also performed simply as a regular temple observance, most often on a morning.

If you are attending for the first time

Anyone may attend. A few practical points: clothes should be clean and simple, and many temples ask that puja clothes be unstitched or at least reserved for the purpose; leather is not carried inside, which includes belts, wallets and watch straps. Photography is often restricted. You are not required to take part in the pouring — sitting and following is entirely normal for a first visit, and the sequence is easier to read once you know that everything happening is a birth being re-staged.