 Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to present indeed what are mainly some findings and insights of my ongoing doctoral Research at Gantt University. It's a research project by Eva de Klerk on these North Indian Digambara monastic leaders It's sponsored by our Flemish Research Institute The Batarkas, I don't know how much of a general introduction is necessary If you want to imagine that for the bulk of the second millennium There was only very few of these ideal Digambara monastics around the the nude guys and In that's that for many centuries you had these aesthetics called Batarkas, which were Not only cloded versus naked. They also were sedentary and Well, the monastic rules were a bit more loose. You could say they also manage temple property So those are mainly the differences the main trust of the presentation What I propose is in a way actually in a way re-approaching both Re-approaching them in the sense that the general Scholarly portrayal of Batarkas would be a very clear distinction between on the one hand You have Mooneys and it's explicitly stated here by characters, but it's implicit present in virtually I think all current discussions of Batarkas the Mooneys on the one hand as charismatic leaders or Charismatic aesthetics and Batarkas on the other hand as routine leaders or the materials primary sources I'm presenting here. I think in a way they show that there is more continuity and more parallels than what we usually would expect In these contemporary scholarly accounts of the Batarkas I analyzed these two tropes these two items which always show up The first one is the Batarkas as a kind of clerics which focuses on their administrative roles you could say in a way and Which would sum up to be this? Manuscript conservation Batarkas are lauded really for their efforts in the copying of manuscripts and after yesterday's Beautiful paper by a Sario Dushji. I should add scrolls. So I should add manuscript and scroll conservation Quite a few of them wrote a lot themselves and the second thing apart from that for which they are really well remembered in the Jane community as well is for the many Consecrations they did go into any Digambra temple which is you older than say fifty hundred two hundred years And you will find a lot of Moortis which have been Consecrated by Batarkas the inscription say so and then the the other three you could sum them up as the Batarkas They were very much they had a strong worldly involvement They acted as caste gurus. They let pilgrimages and they negotiated with the rulers This is a positive evaluation of those Batarkas The other trope is a negative Evaluation and it always discusses the way Batarkas or lax or corrupt or Verses their monastic discipline and they are ritualistic. They are only focused on the ritual Vis-a-vis versus a say more adiatmic approach to Jainism So these two things seem to pop up in the current state of the art So the materials I will be presenting will be Showing something differently the last point here. Just one quotation here Sangavi speaks of the loose conduct of the Batarkas and the Digambara sect being saved from the clutches of the Batarkas by the Tirapan. So I mean this is a very explicit of course So what you have here is a limited appreciation and the Batarkas will be called I think the Hindi word is some rakshak so in a kind of in a way protectors of the Digambara tradition in this in auspicious time of Muslim rule when naked Munis were hardly able to roam roam on the streets in fear of persecution So that's the positive thing but in the end the bottom line would be that What you find in the contemporary accounts or what you do not find is any description of the Batarkas as charismatic ascetics or there is no sign of Formerly any devotion towards the Batarkas either as a type of ascetic still or as gurus So that's my analysis of the current Accounts I Contrast these with some primary sources. I've been looking into and gathering most of them are textual There's this archaeological thing and a few places I will be drawing some parallels with cults of contemporary ascetics which show that there is quite a lot of Continuity in the way Batarkas were worshipped and the way today's naked ideal Munis are worshipped still To start with there's these funerary monuments which can be found throughout the region We're studying only Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and the Dili area Wherever I've been so far where there used to be Batarkas seats You find these kinds of funerary monuments often a few of them at the same place. These are the cremation sites Inside you have these Padukas. So that's a representation of the Batarkas feed You have long inscriptions which give a lot of historical information or very interesting in their own right for that sense You see a stylistic evolution. This is the second century. This is 18th century and for example here in South Rajasthan, Sagwara, you have these Typical or in fact rather atypical square chakras with multiple floors and here instead of Padukas You can also have this pillar-like structure in Ishirikas, which are also kind of a commemorative monuments and these also have representations of Batarkas and inscriptions of the date the Batarka died and his Guru Parampara This place just shows you where these to be found whenever there is a hill around There's a strong preference for for the hills for the cremation sites and for the monuments This is Sagwara And in the 20th century as we've seen in another paper in general and probably only the second half of the 20th century Anthropomorphic images became popular So apart from Padukas you also start to have these these are actually the two last Batarkas of North India This is a Chandrabhurshan of Sunagiri died in 1974 and the very last one Yashakirti of Pratapgarh and Keshariya in 1978 This is more like of a if I can call it that way decorative Statue in the sense that it's protected by a glass window so people cannot actually offer something This is really a chatry as we've seen them with the Padukas put together with an anthropomorphic image here This map I'll be doing more mapping out This just gives you an idea of the places I've visited so far and it's not really indicative or where they are to be found or where they are Not to be found these chatries. I haven't started serving Madhya Pradesh But I already know of several places where you have these sites with chatries with Padukas with Nishirikas And that gives you just an indication of how many Padukas or chatrists found at each place So there's these few important Digambra places in Gujarat, but there's a lot I've seen in Rajasthan mostly strangely in Delhi While knowing Delhi a little bit you can just imagine that these places would be bulldozer the way with the city expanding So or they might be hiding somewhere, but I don't know Now first parallel here today also Chatries are built for acharyas like this one sometimes rather elaborate and inside this chatry here Shiv Shagar and the Parampara of Shanti Shagar Dakshin again his Padukas and this anthropomorphic image Moonies would have these more generic simple type of chatries and here you have three Chabutiras they're caught with the Padukas of nuns nuns are usually commemorated by these very simple Platforms of Padukas have disappeared already from here, but they're here and there's exceptions hit This is Banswara were a very charismatic non apparently lived for a long time and she got this Guru Mandir so this more elaborate structure and these would all be typical Muni structures So this is the cremation site and at the very place You get these chatries and at this place also a cremation had apparently when I visited taken place just recently Some maybe the work for the foundations is ongoing and already there's a bit of worship going on You can see a little oil lamp here. So I mean these places and their worship Interestingly here. These are two acharya chatries Rajasthan and this is Hastinapur where people actually told me that they Did bury relics here in these chatries before they were being built and you could suspect for the same to have happened with the Bataraka chatries also But it's just difficult to tell what there is no way of proving it is not written in the inscription But today in these places relics are being buried This is the same chatry as we saw before of a Bataraka and down here You have acharya Yogasagar who died in this place and the poster announces the building of his Samadhi style of his Chatry and already some worship is taking place and there also people told me that yes when we built this thing There will be relics of him which we kept aside now being buried at that place Apart from the sites of the cremation in general in temples in general You can find a lot of Padukas of the most famous monks like here Shanti Sagar Chani Shanti Sagar Dakshin so many Padukas to be found and this is a bit different in the sense that this is a living Ascetic who is being worshipped through his Padukas here. So this Muni inspired the building of this temple. So people going in that temple have a strong connection to him and they They actually already worshipping you can see here rise being offered Agra puja. So in front of the Padukas not on top of it So the same way you had the Padukas and the chatries of the Bataraka's You have the same practices still today with the Munis and then there's a textual dimension which relates to the same thing We're talking about puja So it's Astradravia puja the typical Digambra style of offering these eight substances in a tali Which would be done for any Gina any Sidha chakra puja, whatever the same type of puja same type of ritual texts. I found them in three places This is from the almer Shastri Bandar Batarak Jagad Kirti Kipuja I offer endlessly at the lotus feet of Surendra Kirti and indeed Batarak Surendra Kirti was the guru of Jagad Kirti Let me show this a bit later on. This is a very typical Digambra ritual Introduction reverse in Sanskrit which uses these a beach mantras. I'll show the full thing later on But what you get after that is the the eight substances being offered so that goes water fragrance rice flowers sweets lights Incense and fruits and these are offered and the texts refer explicitly to the Padukas Padukas of the Batarakas and This is another example here on Kleshwa. This is one of the the Surat Batarak Agadis Every day I worship the feet every day I worship these lotus feet and the third place where I found them and actually this is the only three places where I really looked for Them by now. I expect to find these kinds of puja text in every place. I mean they're related to the chat trees Here it speaks of a pushpaanjali being thrown at the feet of the guru and at the end here Usually they identify which Bataraka the puja was written for in this case. It's a it's a Gyan Bhushan of the either seat Now this is all puja and worship of deceased ascetics There's also in this diksha video here. This Bataraka ordination ceremony prescription ritual There's the same Kind of thing which worships and here it says paramparagattam suri mantram dadyat So the immediately after this is not the start of the manuscript, but immediately after the suri mantra has been given to the Bataraka effectively Establishing him as the new Bataraka on the pad at that point you get the same kind of worship of a living Bataraka so again both deceased and living ascetics being worshipped in the same way and Well, should I that's surely is interesting to just show you very slowly very shortly It says here paramesh din so Bataraka's are called here paramesh din which would be a little bit I mean on traditional say usually would have the five great men and Bataraka's as clothed ascetics would not not really be Included there. I mean it's very telling actually And later on you also have tilakam at the pad I was being applied to his feet and he gets to recite The good Wawali of his tradition. I mean the manuscript in itself is very interesting for different reasons too Now I was talking about the sites in Delhi being bulldozer the way Why wouldn't it surprise me to have happened there because the other chartries elsewhere? Also, they're not visited very often And this is an exception to that. This is the only place. I've seen where there is still Worship of a Bataraka going on daily in the sense of when we were there. We saw some art being Performed at what is his Padukas are behind. This is a miniature gadi. So representing his seat. This is Vidya Nandi This is the first half of the 16th century Vidya Nandi Kshetra is the place in Surat and apart from this daily arty there is an I haven't seen this myself But there's an annual Mela in which which is supposed to be on the death day of the Bataraka So this is like four or five centuries after his death. This is still being celebrated and in that sense This is a unique case of what I think will probably be have been happening at the chartries at all of those chartries each day or each year so Quite extensive worship here of both his Padukas and anthropomorphic image, but this is added later on Trolls a lot of people and indeed a booklet here found there. Let me show it to you Now maybe the full thing it says here Om Hrim Surat Nagara Nivasi Sri Vidya Nandi Abiyo and then the thing goes and this is what you found in all eight-fold worship ashtadra via Pooja Digambara text whether it's a Gina or a Bataraka So descend right here someone won't shut off on them off on an amazing like the calling So the Bataraka is being called to the center So the Bataraka is being called and the object of worship is being stopped and established So the same thing as we found in the manuscripts still being used actually at this annual fair in Surat also And the parallel with the contemporary settings these kinds of Pooja text here You have Vidya Sagar Pooja with the same structure here And I found a lot of them and I got fascinated by them a bit There you find them in a lot of Pooja but some Graha kind of text or in special brochures Commemoration volumes, etc. And they all I mean this is the start of it all and then you get the eight-fold worship of these Mostly deceased sometimes also living monks This is Vidya Sagar and this is Well, first of all, this is Arti, so we had the Pooja text Digambaram lay people at least the Bisa Pantis They perform Arti in the evening daily for the Jina image and in a similar way they perform Arti for a living ascetic also So in the evening shortly before the ascetic would be taking rest lay people of the location Where the Mooni is residing for a day would gather and offer Arti a lamp offering for this living ascetic While he usually they're still reading their manuscripts a little bit undisturbed onwards And lately they sing these these very devotional songs And they're supposed to be song, so let me do that and apologize for doing so after So just the part of it this goes J. J. Guru are a bucket of Pukare Arati monga lagaya Karake arati badamanandiji ki Mohati mere hatjaya So the reason why I'm not afraid of singing is during my field work I noticed that one's capacity of singing is not the most important criteria for doing so The thing what the text says right here the the criterion that matters most is the amount of bhakti one one gets to generate And so let's perform the Arti and what happens here is by performing the Arti of Padmanandiji Acharya Padmanandiji By performing the Arti Mohati mere hatjaya the darkness of ignorance is dispelled So if you look at Jainism from a very Doctrinal say karma Siddhant kind of a perspective this would be rather incredible of course But it's all it's very very devotional and it's very beautiful as far as I ask and again You have the trope of the the team of the Charanas the feet of the living Guru being Called upon here too and this is one of I think is one of the most beautiful lines of poetry I've read in the last few years. I don't read a lot of it But still it's not dependent on its literary characteristics But because of the whole setting of devotion in which I read it and sang it along with the people and It has the Charana team and it goes like So again the last piece and this is a very typical South Asian thing Of course the the Guru's feet or an important thing and the dust of the Guru's feet are still a Blessing to have on your head and the last thing again Which happens is by having this dust of the Guru's feet on your head But the other body once fate will change or once karma would change in a way you see so these are very Devotional texts and this is a general Guru Bhakti but performed again for this living ascetic sitting there and This here again says that what are the fruits to be reaped by the laity performing this It says that milikarjo gunagawi we having come together and singing these Artees and singing the glory of these ascetics Manusha Janama suffer our human life will be successful or will be fulfilled and Heaven good luck and all of these good things will be met. So Just by devotion. We actually get good karmic results This is a very fascinating genre. I have a lot of them and interestingly here also They they sing the glory of these ascetics. They present them as ideal ascetics in the sense of being Self-restrained or this or that quality very wise very compassionate And at the same time they enter these kind of biographical data So typical in both the Artees and the pujas of these contemporary moonies now You would have the names of the mother and the father being mentioned. So very specific Biographical data the name of the the Dixaguru here In this case, this is an artee of three Acharyas of this one lineage at the same time And for all three of them their birth place their native place is being given. So The nice thing about these Hagiographical texts is that they present the ascetic ideal and in a way they combine that to very particular details So they show what is the ascetic ideal and they connect it to what this particular. So I mean In a very crude way, you could say that if you worship a Gina image in the end It's just stone, but when you have this living representative, even though maybe he's not really ideal You have an image of an example of flesh and blood, which is just much more inspiring in a way so that's what I read into it and that's Why I think these by specific biographic data are just as important as the idea of representing the ideal We should go back to the Batarakas and there's these manuscripts these Gita's these songs I've found a few of them here in Nagor, but a very important author for the subject of Batarakas Kastur Chankasli while mentions many more edited a few so it seems to have been a very Well-spread and often used genre. These are songs Like here Dharmakirti Gunagaya. So here comes the singing of the glory of the Batarakas. This Dharmakirti. This is a 16th century Bataraka, but the same Guttaka had also Bataraka Gita's of later Bataraka. So this is 17th century stuff at least And what they serve for the text themselves explained that these songs are supposed to be sung By beautiful women as a Mangalachara when the Bataraka came to town. So to welcome him in a way What else you get these percussive instruments being beaten? So it's a very festive atmosphere and the whole Song is really it's devotional. I mean, this is typical devotional stuff more a manna a dick on undo So my mind is so happy just with the site of this Bataraka the I mean like other Song compositions non-jain from this period they give the The the raga in which the song is supposed to be sung, but they don't give much more psychological information But they're clearly meant to be sung and they describe again. They describe the Bataraka's as ideal Aesthetics and this is really the main point of the presentation that they and they would be going like this is a Mahavratta Pala. So this Bataraka protects his Mahavratta's and there's so many examples his five samittis His three Gupti rules and his 13 vidi rules. These are all Typical monastic rules to be followed by an ideal monk, which would mean a muni not necessarily Bataraka But these texts actually read as descriptions of what a good Digambra monk should be like and this is very strange when you first Like I have first read this Secondary literature on the Bataraka's which says that they were basically lax and they were not so venerable These Bataraka's whether they were or they were not they surely are represented as ideal monks here I'm moving I'm moving I keep the gate here edited by Kassli while Last example just so they keep that is a new tallaheebabadook. So only from the the mere sighting of this Bataraka my Existential suffering is being erased Seven minutes seven minutes. Thank you. That's perfect. Thank you They're called near grunt and mahamuni there They are supposed to have the 28 mula gunas of a Digambra static or the dust a laxinadharma So it represents them with all the typical epithets the typical descriptions of what a muni is supposed to be like And the last example and I'll skip over this I've written a bit more about this in the written version of this paper but Taoism still looking into that so these are lineage texts of the historical Successions of Bataraka's but they trace them back to the Acharyas Which came before the Bataraka's and trace them back to Gotama and in the end to to Mahavirji of course and These do the same things they describe the qualities of the Bataraka's and so on typically these texts the older Say first millennium Acharyas you just get a list of names But then the later ones so the Bataraka's you do get these longer descriptions with all their qualities being so And what I wrote in that paper was that it seems a bit like some of it might be based on real Historical memory of what these aesthetics were and what their specific qualities were but whereas in the Gita's in the Pujas You seem to have like all the Necessary qualities of a good aesthetic being projected on this one person whether he's ideal or not What seems to happen here in a way? Maybe is that all these? Necessary qualities are spread like distributed all over the lineage like one Bataraka is Expert in Agama and another is a Syaadvaad expert and another one is a vanvasi tapasvi, etc So the whole lineage instead of just one aesthetic the whole lineage is represented as consisting entirely together as ideal monks Well, I didn't talk yet about there's there's much less proof But there's some padukas or 11th century Acharyas So which predates the Bataraka area being worshipped in exactly the same way There is these kinds of 8-fold texts which are still very commonly used and which also have this 8-fold worship of monastic leaders So I'm just drawing the parallels here with what came before the Bataraka's in a way and If you refer in a very general way to the Namukar mantra which presents these five types of Paramishitins As venerable the Jinas the Siddhas the Acharyas the Upajayas and all the monks I mean it of course has a hierarchy starting from the Jinas to all the monks, but it does represent them I think all as like five all five as equally worshipped so in the end worshippable venerable So in the end it doesn't really matter if you're worshipping a Jina or this living Muni You're you're actually worshipping the living I The living or the deceased ideal monk. So you're you're worshipping the ascetic ideal Just some parallels so with what came before I already told you about these examples with what we see now the Pujas and the Chattis Which are really identical you could say and worship of living ascetics actually this 8-fold worship Is also performed daily in the the feeding ritual of Digambara Munis But just before he gets his food they do a very seems almost formal kind of a worship of the of the Munis today So the conclusion as I announced would be that there really was a very very strong devotion and worship of Batarakas as Ideal ascetics again if they were or they were not they surely were being worshipped as representing this ascetic ideal I Can conclude in three four minutes will that be on time? Yeah, I think you'll be okay Now how to explain the fact that Batarakas being clothed being sedentary surely or not ideal Digambara Monics, but they Monks, but they were worshipped as being such how to explain this well some of them Probably were far more aesthetically inclined or active than we would suggest this Sakhla Kirtiras here describes this This 15th century Bataraka as having been naked monk for 18 years before he actually ascended the Bataraka pad etc That's a very obvious reason Then the Batarakas are worshipped as an ascetic ideal when no ideal ascetics are present as I said in this period There were very few Munis so you could you could maybe think that the Batarakas well I don't don't use the word substitute etc. But that would be an idea I think a superior explanation would be the next one that Devotion of asceticism and devotion to the ascetic ideal or or a crucial element of Jaina lay practice and Jaina monks practice as well and Guru Bhakti Of course just and I mean this is really the main conclusion in a way for me that Bhakti is just such a crucial element of Jaina practice Even if it's not an ideal ascetic etc or and I have some Quotations here to explain what I meant here. They symbolize the ascetic ideal again characters here Even those Munis of the most modest to come they exemplify Extraordinary asceticism and are accorded respect by the lady on those grounds alone on what they exemplify not necessarily on what they are Individually particularly Similarly here by silver in the case of Buddhist monks. She makes the same point monks are not fully required to adhere to the highest values It's enough if they symbolize them. What is crucial is their potency as symbols of renunciation So you use this living ascetic as an ideal to worship whether he is or he is not now very very fastly I've tried to show them that Bhattarakas were just as charismatic as monks or today the other way around you could also Partly at least try to show the ways in Munis today carry the same kind of clerical Administrative functions as the Bhattarakas are more readily identified with Even though like we heard this afternoon the publication of scriptures by Shwetambara monks is much more known today. Also Digambara ascetics carry great weight in that project Acharyas today also consecrate images and They inspire building projects and the worldly involvement which is supposed to be more typical for Bhattarakas. There is a few of these examples Shanti Sagar Dakshin protested against the Mumbai State Temple entry bill or here Vidyananda Samantabhadra who fasted against in the Bahubali affair So these are explicitly political stances. They take really and leading the the late also so Even though they are supposed to be Ideally not active in those fields. Actually, of course, they are and the Tantric practices with which Bhattarakas are more readily identified Some Munis today have publications of all collections of mantras and And young trust etc. So again while doctrinally Munis are not supposed to involve in Tantra They obviously do at least some of them. So you would get an a priori identification of the Bhattarakas with these Practices and an a priori devaluation of these practices as being inappropriate for Munis. Whereas Actually The distinction is not that clear and this is the last point How to explain the fact that Bhattarakas were apparently very charismatic ideal monks But in our 20th century descriptions disappeared as such and appeared as a kind of lax and ritualistic Not so ideal aesthetic Obviously the first reason is the revival of the Digambara Munilijis in the 20th century So they have come to the spotlight and became the center of laser tension This is no doubt the biggest reason very up the most obvious reason at least Why we do not consider Bhattarakas to have been charismatic now There's the terra-pante opposition of which we had this quotation, of course Not just the terra-pante opposed the Bhattarakas in a way their opposition and their discourse of opposition has also You could say been internalized by the B. Supantis in the sense that today B. Supantis Also when they talk about Bhattarakas, they would stress this fact the fact that they They protected Digambara Jainism in this tough period. So they B. Supantis today also stress their clerical functions in a way and This is an explanation highly hypothetical because it would take much more effort to explain it, but I'm taking a Parallel here with something that has been spelled out much more clearly in the Western study of Hinduism the way that Westerners have perceived of Indian religious traditions in general and it goes back to like a Biblical roadmap of how to understand Before scholars started working on their material or before the scholars even started before the missionaries actually went to India or before the missionaries before any travelers went to India people in the West would already be knowing what they would be meeting in India which would be paganisms But the ideal the idea would be that there was originally a Christian a Christian revelation and that is then declined into all kinds of heathenisms and that Interpretive framework that template then discusses. This is a protestant view, of course Parallel to Catholicism you would have corrupt and ritualistic priests who actually made this this originally pure tradition which in the case of Buddhism and Jainism was filtered from the scriptures like saying look there wasn't original aesthetic Tradition, but what we see today when we go to India is quite different and indeed it would seem that the Batarakas just fitted this template as corrupt priests like not just Booler, but all of the early Encounters or descriptions of Batarakas in the West I've seen they describe them as priests or high priests and they're very ignorant and If I can conclude with a little joke here Booler actually calls the Batarakah he met in Delhi It's not a very big joke, but he he calls them very ignorant Apparently he explains a few lines later on because they couldn't tell him much about the connection between the Batarakah Lineages in the north and the south and I think today we still don't know much more about it So that leaves us in good company with with this Batarakah here So that was the third reason and the fourth one the Batarakas involvement with as Jains call it themselves mantra tantra yantra and the fact that in Modern Jainism's discourse of Jainism as a scientific religion as a very rational thing There is no place whatsoever for mantra this magical Irrational thing so in those descriptions of Batarakas of modern Jainism You wouldn't want to be stressing those things which do not fit with the image of modern Jainism So these are the four some of which may be hypothetical explanations of why concluding why Still whenever as the Batarakas were very charismatic ideals Assetics worshipped as ideal aesthetics in their own period why this understanding of them seems to have disappeared Didn't do too bad with the time. You're okay. Thank you so very much