35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

260
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
Knowing this background made the bleakness of Ludarva all the
more poignant when we finally rode into the scattered ruins that
are all that remains of it nearly a millennium later. Riding past a
dried-up tributary of the Kak River, we’d passed the mournful wreck
of an eleventh-century Sati Mata temple, the shrine to some
unknown princess who had thrown herself alive onto her husband’s
funeral pyre and become a goddess. A beautiful young girl, dressed
in her wedding sari, her husband’s corpse cradled in her lap as flames
surrounded her: the imagined image was powerful. But nothing
was left now except stones overgrown with weeds. Not even her
name had survived.
We finally dismounted, however, by something still very much
surviving. The magnificent Jain temple at Ludarva was founded
two centuries before Christ, and still functions in excellent
condition, though, as with the Krishna temple we’d passed earlier, I
couldn’t help but wonder who it still functioned for. Outside, a
priest who looked old enough to have helped build the place sat on
guard, his long white hair hanging down and mingling with a beard
like a bleached privet. Above his head, fixed to the wall, a sign read
USE OF EGGS, MEET AND VINE IS STRIKLY PROHIB HEER.
He might have looked like Santa’s great-great-grandfather, but he
was a real stickler for rules and regulations. Fully prepared to remove
my shoes in the temple, I wasn’t prepared to be strip-searched until
this guardian was convinced he’d found every scrap of leather on me
and removed it. Wallet, passport pouch, belt, watch strap: He
confiscated the lot before opening his gate.
Jainism, which resembles Buddhism, is also an offshoot of
Hinduism, founded largely in reaction to the bewildering
proliferation of Hindu deities (up to 36 million now, by some
counts), as well as the depressing harshness of caste restrictions
designed to discourage intermarriage. Originally, the caste system
reflected the divisions that exist in any society: the kinds of
temperament and the various tasks suited to varying capabilities. It
was not the rigid and tyrannical structure it later became. Once the
system had permitted movement, even marriage, between castes. By
the time of Jainism, however, it existed solely to preserve an elite
status quo in power, restricting opportunities to all but the chosen,