Parasnath – A Holy Climb
It was thirty years, according to our tiny barefooted guide,
since Europeans had last climbed this holy hill. He checked
our footwear, for no leather is allowed to taint this
hallowed ground, a giant forested mass rising 4500 feet out
of the plains of Bihar, in Eastern India.
Our guide, Ganesha, was an ancient Brahmin, with wild grey
hair smudging his deep red tilak, the caste mark painted on
his forehead. He looked doubtfully at the older and rounder
members of our party. It was a long way to the top.
Foreign visitors might be few and far between, but many
hundreds of Indians make the ascent of Parasnath every day,
except in the monsoon. For Parasnath is one of the holiest
places for those millions of people who call themselves
Jains, followers of the Jinas, those who have overcome the
world's misery.
We had some pretence ourselves to be overcomers, for ours
too was a holy journey. Hindu, Baha'i and Christian, we had
come together as twelve pilgrims, to journey across India
visiting the holy sites of the world's faiths - to overcome
some of the guilt between them. Like Chaucher's pilgrims we
had already shared many stories. From the tombs of the Sufi
saints in Delhi, and Lord Krishna's paradise in nearby
Mathura, we had journeyed here via the Great Bodhi tree of
the Buddha's enlightenment.
Only in the rainy season is this mountain deserted. That
isn't because its steep mud paths become impassable, though.
It's because of the insects. The Jain philosophy goes much
further than any other in its respect for other life forms.
Treading on even an insect is to be strenuously avoided. So
during the monsoon Parasnath Hill belongs to its billions of
beetles and mosquitoes.
In every Jain temple throughout India there is a stylised
painting of this hill. It is instantly recognisable, even if
you can't read the Sanskrit texts around it. For twenty-four
temples, dedicated to the twenty-four Jain saints, occupy
its several summits. A pilgrim, if she has stamina and
devotion in equal measure, should visit all of them.
In fact, you can manage without the stamina. Old,
overweight, or simply lazy pilgrims are catered for. You can
be conveyed to the top, in half the time it would take you
to walk, in a crude form of sedan chair.
Two men sling a thick bamboo over their shoulders,
suspending a rope and cane tray. Sat cross-legged on the
tray, which sways and creaks its way up the hill, you can
attain the view, and the merit, without the exertion.
We, however, walked. We climbed steadily for three hours,
through what the Indian Ordnance Survey nicely describes as
"dense mixed jungle". Occasionally the jungle thinned, to
offer views of rolling green. Before long there was nothing
else to see. The silent jungle seemed to have swallowed the
rest of the world. No wonder the Jain saints had come here
to attain their enlightenment.
Over two and a half thousand years - for the Jain faith is
as old as Buddhism - a million pairs of feet have even
carved a path out of the solid rock, where this protrudes
through the packed red earth of Parasnath Hill.
As we climbed, Ganesha told a story. It was a favourite Jain
story, good for the climber to meditate on, he said. It was
the story of the Man in the Well...
"A man encountered a wild elephant. The only escape was down
a well, at the foot of a tree. Leaping into the well, the
man clutched hold of a clump of reeds, which checked his
fall half way down.
"At the bottom of the well a giant snake waited with open
jaws. Two mice gnawed at the roots of the meagre reeds.
Above his head the angry elephant charged at the tree and
dislodged a honeycomb, which fell down the well and onto the
poor man's head. Its bees flew about and stung him. But a
single drop of honey rolled down his face and onto his
tongue.
"Immediately, nothing else was of any importance, save that
he should taste another drop of honey..."
That, said Ganesha with relish, is the extent of the world's
fleeting pleasures, and the reality of its misery.
We approached the first temple, on the lowest summit.
Surrounded by a narrow moat, its ornate and squat towers
made a clean silhouette against the burningly blue sky.
Without our shoes we had to run across the hot courtyard
into the pitch dark interior.
Twenty-three white marble images slowly became visible,
lining the walls of the simple space. A single black one,
larger than the others, presided. Jain images are as austere
as the faith they represent. Unblinking, and unclothed, they
all adopt the same lotus-like position, showing how by their
own efforts they have overcome the world.
The Jains believe in an endlessly recycling universe,
unimaginably longer even than our modern cosmology speaks
of. There is no God to control or direct its ceaseless ebb
and flow. Individual human beings, subject to the laws of
karma, create their own destinies, and strive endlessly to
be free of them.
The importance of these twenty-four great persons, whose
proper title is Tirthankaras, is that they have freed
themselves, and shown us the way.
Mahavira, the last Tirthankara and the founder of Jainism,
was a contemporary of the Buddha. It is suggested that the
Buddha came to his doctrine of the Middle Way ("moderation
in all things") in reaction against Mahavira's extreme
asceticism.
But we must press on. This temple is only a staging post,
not the most important place on the mountain. The highest
summit is crowned with a single temple, approached up a few
hundred marble steps. This temple is dedicated to the last
Tirthankara but one, and built over a tiny cave. In this
cave, the Tirthankara is said to have meditated, and reached
enlightenment.
We entered the cave, touched its rough roof and cold floor,
looked out through its tiny door over the endless forest,
and offered our few rice grains with proper solemnity. These
offerings were sacred to the memory of a life lived more
than three millennia ago, as long before Christ as we are
after William the Conqueror.
If you passed by on the Grand Trunk Road, you would not know
Lord Parasnath's cave was here, a day's walk to a mountain
summit. But India remains able to offer itself and its
history to those who will walk a short way along its ancient
and sacred paths.
© Kenneth Wilson
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