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JAINISM intervene in the course of the Universal Round as does, for example, the supreme divinity of the Hindus, Vişņu, when he sends down periodically a particle of his transcendent essence as an Incarnation to restore the divine order of the universe upset by reckless tyrants and selfish demons.88 The Jaina Tīrthankaras are absolutely cut off. Nevertheless, the Jaina devotee pays them unceasing worship, concentrating his pious attention upon their images, as a means to his own progress in inner purification. And they are sometimes even celebrated side by side with the popular Hindu household and village gods; but never in the same spirit. For what the gods provide is temporal wellbeing, warding away the demons of disease and disaster, whercas the worship of the Tīrıhankaras-the “Victors," the "Heroes," the "Makers of the Crossing”-moves the mind to its highest good, which is eternal peace beyond the joys as well as the sorrows of the universal round.
The Doctrine of Maskarin Gosāla
The Indian ascetic carries a staff: maskara, danda. Vedāntic monks are sometimes called, therefore, eka-dandin, "those bearing one staff”; but also hamsa, "wild goose or swan"-because they are wanderers, like the great birds that migrate from the jungles of the south to the lakes of the Himalayas, at home in the lofty sky as well as on the water-surfaces of the earthly plane.
88 Zinimer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, index, s.v. "Vishnu: avatars of."
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