160
18.2 The Cave
We sat before a cave at the Jain complex of 19 Svetambara and Digambara temples
at Taranga in the northeastern Gujarati District of Mehsana, in India, whose construction had commenced in 1121. It was at that time that the King Kumarapala
(1143–1174) of the Gujarati Chauylukya Dynasty converted to Jainism under the
legendary Jain guru, Acharya Hemchandra. On this particular day, in the early
1980s, a word that a tiger had been seen near, if not at the same cave where two
Digambara monks had spent the night, came as no surprise. Mahavira himself was
said to have converted a lion to a vegetarian diet; a story that most certainly informed
the many subsequent tales surrounding Saint Jerome and his companion lion. As of
the most recent census of 2015, there are believed to be 523 Asiatic (Gir) lions left
in India, and an estimated 3000 tigers, mostly within the 40 national parks throughout the country, and a few outside the parks. In addition to the Canine distemper
virus, which is known to have killed many Indian lions in the past, both species of
large feline are fundamentally victims of inevitable collisions with humans, in habitat that is almost entirely fragmented and insufficient to sustain robust lion
populations.
Many years ago, Indian conservationists had hoped to translocate the Gir lions
into regions removed from approximately 20,000 known indigenous cattle-droving
pastoralist nomads in the area. Traditionally, a conservationist rule of thumb suggested that at least 4000 square kilometers of untrammeled, pristine habitat was
necessary to be equated with wilderness, into which endangered species might be
moved. But across India, there is no such wilderness (or in Nepal, for that matter).
The largest regional semi-wild areas of the Indian subcontinent do not exceed 500
square kilometers, at best.
Which places concepts like reincarnation, and the pan-Asiatic ethical infatuation
with zoo-narratives into a chilling topology, one fraught with competitive Homo
sapiens who are distributed across India in over 600,000 villages. The Jain pantheon
of sentient beings, in which a Jain monk speaks to the animals, in the manner of St.
Francis, has been enshrined in the Jain canons for millennia, known as the
Samavasarana, or Refuge to All. It comprises a divine pavilion of devas, heavenly
beings, and has been painted in countless guises; menageries of species phylogenetically choreographed in a zoological fancy of freedom, discourse, interdependent
joy, and participation. Often the architectonic is cosmological, embracing a circular
vision of blissful reunion
8
. In the Jain yatras (mandala-like works of art), the disciple meditates upon the loka, or Jain universe, recognizing its fundaments of pudgala
(matter) and the restless realm of jivas and nigodas, souls and atoms. It is a world
8 See, for example, The Peaceful Liberators – Jain Art from India, by Pratapaditya Pal, with contributions by Shridhar Andhare, John E. Cort, Sadashiv Gorakshakar, Phyllis Granoff, John Guy,
Gerald James Larson and Stephen Markel, Los Angeles County Museum Of Art, Los Angeles,
1994, p. 76, Cat. 105, “Hall of the Universal Sermon, (Samavasarana, detail) Rajasthan, Jaipur, c.
1800.
18 A Cave at Taranga
18.2 The Cave
We sat before a cave at the Jain complex of 19 Svetambara and Digambara temples
at Taranga in the northeastern Gujarati District of Mehsana, in India, whose construction had commenced in 1121. It was at that time that the King Kumarapala
(1143–1174) of the Gujarati Chauylukya Dynasty converted to Jainism under the
legendary Jain guru, Acharya Hemchandra. On this particular day, in the early
1980s, a word that a tiger had been seen near, if not at the same cave where two
Digambara monks had spent the night, came as no surprise. Mahavira himself was
said to have converted a lion to a vegetarian diet; a story that most certainly informed
the many subsequent tales surrounding Saint Jerome and his companion lion. As of
the most recent census of 2015, there are believed to be 523 Asiatic (Gir) lions left
in India, and an estimated 3000 tigers, mostly within the 40 national parks throughout the country, and a few outside the parks. In addition to the Canine distemper
virus, which is known to have killed many Indian lions in the past, both species of
large feline are fundamentally victims of inevitable collisions with humans, in habitat that is almost entirely fragmented and insufficient to sustain robust lion
populations.
Many years ago, Indian conservationists had hoped to translocate the Gir lions
into regions removed from approximately 20,000 known indigenous cattle-droving
pastoralist nomads in the area. Traditionally, a conservationist rule of thumb suggested that at least 4000 square kilometers of untrammeled, pristine habitat was
necessary to be equated with wilderness, into which endangered species might be
moved. But across India, there is no such wilderness (or in Nepal, for that matter).
The largest regional semi-wild areas of the Indian subcontinent do not exceed 500
square kilometers, at best.
Which places concepts like reincarnation, and the pan-Asiatic ethical infatuation
with zoo-narratives into a chilling topology, one fraught with competitive Homo
sapiens who are distributed across India in over 600,000 villages. The Jain pantheon
of sentient beings, in which a Jain monk speaks to the animals, in the manner of St.
Francis, has been enshrined in the Jain canons for millennia, known as the
Samavasarana, or Refuge to All. It comprises a divine pavilion of devas, heavenly
beings, and has been painted in countless guises; menageries of species phylogenetically choreographed in a zoological fancy of freedom, discourse, interdependent
joy, and participation. Often the architectonic is cosmological, embracing a circular
vision of blissful reunion
8
. In the Jain yatras (mandala-like works of art), the disciple meditates upon the loka, or Jain universe, recognizing its fundaments of pudgala
(matter) and the restless realm of jivas and nigodas, souls and atoms. It is a world
8 See, for example, The Peaceful Liberators – Jain Art from India, by Pratapaditya Pal, with contributions by Shridhar Andhare, John E. Cort, Sadashiv Gorakshakar, Phyllis Granoff, John Guy,
Gerald James Larson and Stephen Markel, Los Angeles County Museum Of Art, Los Angeles,
1994, p. 76, Cat. 105, “Hall of the Universal Sermon, (Samavasarana, detail) Rajasthan, Jaipur, c.
1800.
18 A Cave at Taranga