2/2
(cont)
+ The relation between the Hindu moorties in temples/homes and the same Gods during homam is straightforward. This is not some religion of invisible entities/plagiarised fictions. This is the religion of the Hindu Gods, which consists of very real and *visible* Gods. (Like the Daoist and Shinto religions, etc, from what I understand.) As another summarised excellently in a comment on the Raj2004 blog, the moorties of the Hindu Gods seen in temples = the sculpted versions of the same forms of the Gods *seen* [by some/many] during the Hindu Vedic sacrifice (not always fire sacrifice, as for some Vedic rites they use kumbhas of water by/in which the Gods are invoked, or so I was led to understand when I pried). The Moorties are sculpted in temples so that the forms of the Gods can be seen and remembered [and thereafter recognized] by all Hindus and may pervade their minds. So the everyday Hindu at home in his pooja area actually has direct access not only to his ancestral Gods and performs a form of Vedic ritual himself everyday (whenever he offers food to the Gods before he partakes of it), he takes part in a bigger Vedic yagnya at his temple. And the fact that his hRudayam during internal pooja is likened to the Vedic fire itself, seems to me to serve as literal proof for that MBh statement of Yudhisthira about how the Veda is seen in all 4 varNas. All Hindu society essentially. The Vedic fire in the hRudayam represents of course all the Hindu Gods, not just that Bhagavaan called SaptajihvaaH.
[Much of what I say above incl previous post about pooja/moorties is true of Daoist, Shinto and Greek etc religions also, because temples and moorties (and rituals prescribed in detail associated with this) - aka "idol worship" in alien terms - are highly typical of Gods-based Gods-centred religions, even though independently derived in all these cases.
While the Taoists etc don't have the Vedam of course, Daoists can be seen communing with their Gods through fire also: I have seen them burn their calligraphic writing containing <their business> in their fire, by which act their words go to their Gods. Also, the Daoists offer food to the Daoist Gods and hand out prasadam - which, as far as I have witnessed, has been fruit. The Daoists perform daily rituals and pooja to the Gods. Their pooja rooms are full of the moorties of their Gods, BTW. And these are just the *lay* traditional Daoists. Their poojaris etc perform even more rites.]
It is the Jains and Buddhists that need to show proof for where they got their rites from. The fact that they both insinuate that Hindus copied pooja from them instead, implies that they recognise similarities with *Hindu* pooja rituals - which are actually Vedic rituals. But what similarities do they mean? Hindus reciting Mantras* at the Gods? :grin: Singing at the Gods? What, *feeding* the Gods (=essence of homam) including mantra puShpam?
[* Mantras by definition are Vedic in origin and have no meaning outside Hindu religion. No one is going to pretend that OM is anything other than Vedic, right? It was Buddhism and Jainism that copied that too, just as they copied every other formulaic mantra format, down to adding "huM phaT svAhA" maalamantra type stuff. The very concept of Mantras are Vedic, not Buddhist or Jain. <- Another point that shows up who copycatted from whom. And even though they copied it, it's not theirs originally and is only found in their religion *because* they copied it from Hindus' religion. But OM refers exclusively to the trimoorti/parabrahman/sarvadevAH (see asvatha vRikSha/Lingam) alone, so OM etc has no meaning or sense outside the Hindus' religion, despite others' attempts at cloning it/grafting it onto other religions. And people can hardly try claiming mantras for ur-Shramanism because Vedam=mantras (by definition), so will they next be claiming all the Vedam for ur-Shramanism?
Of course the unspoken excuse offered by the Tamizh Buddhist site that was alluded to in the 2 posts ago is that Mantras are "all-Indian" and that Vedic=Hindu Gods similarly are suddenly "all-Indian" (in both cases owing to the long-term inculturation on these Hindu matters) and therefore belong to "everyone". So, magically, everything exclusively Hindu must be recognised - and the requirement is on Hindus, btw - as belonging "equally" to Buddhism/Jainism etc - no it doesn't. Yet the latter also have the right (again magically) to declare Hindu Kovils are supposedly "actually" Buddhist/Jain, and they will try to evict [some] Hindus from the nation as being "not native" while declaring themselves native via the ur-Shramanism fiction, and will invent sobstories about "persecution" - but let's not point out who actually persecuted whom - and oh yeah, they'll rewrite ancient Hindu authors and their sacred Hindu works as being actually "Jain/Buddhist" or at least so in idea/inspiration, and rewrite Indian history with the concocted ur-Shramanism all in order to claim Hindu Vedic teachings for ur-Shramanism and to thereafter declare that it was *Hindus/Hindu religion* who stole from ur-Shramanism instead.
Of course the whole ur-Shramanism thing was invented for missionary purposes. As is the purpose of all the inculturation/plagiarism too. The aim is both to try to end Hindu religion AND to try to claim Hindu stuff for their own religion in order to peddle it better.)]
[color="#0000FF"]+ The greatest absurdity however came when the JMF was trying to explain how temple worship originated in Jainism. After declaring that Temples could never follow from the Vedam/Vedic rites, the JMF proceeded to explain how temples derived from Jainism by reviewing the history of temples in Jainism itself. They mentioned an early type of Jain stupa and how this evolved into a building - the first type of Jain temple - whose name they admitted/blundered that it derived from "yajaniya devata".
And with that they shot themselves in the foot again. Because that phrase in itself underlines the relation between the Vedic fire sacrifice and poojaa.[/color]
YajanIya - as even I can see (but they couldn't) - is related to yagnya/Vedic fire sacrifice's ritualistic worship of the Gods. It's obvious, but let's do this by the book. So looking it up in an easy-access dictionary and it says: "related to sacrifice or worship".
Now, a devatA is of course not just any random Skt word but is particularly related to Vedic sacrifice: being the very Vedic Gods being invoked for a yagnya. A yajanIya devatA is of course the particular God (or Gods) who is the object of a particular sacrifice or pooja. [Also seen in how Hindu stotra preambles often tend to start off. You know, by declaring something ~like "asya <something> mantrasya, <something> RiShiH, <something> ChandaH, <something> devatA(H), followed by <key mantra outline>, and then the formulaic preamble usually ends with <devatA/H-name(s) prItyarthe + to acquire meaningful things> jape viniyogaH". The words mantra, RiShiH, ChandaH and of course devatA(H) - followed by mantra outline - are all Very Vedic, as is the purpose of reciting the stotra. The devatA is the subject of the stotram as well as the object of the stotram being recited, the one(s) being addressed.]
Of course, the silly JMF only knows to mention that yajanIya devatA means... the deity worshipped, by which they want to refer to their teerthankaras.
But "yajanIya devatA" is clearly in origin a reference to Hindu Vedic Gods, and means the *Hindu God* worshipped (both by pooja and yagnya). JMF admits that their earliest temple constructions derived their names from "YajanIya DevatA" and that this last means "deity to be worshipped", without realising that the phrase equally means the "deity of the VEDIC sacrifice". Its two equivalent meanings shows the one-to-one relationship in Hindus' religion between yagnya and temples/temple moorties/pooja. It actually also shows that the earliest Jain temple constructions were not just named after Vedic Hindu concepts but that practically, too, Jains were "inspired" in their temple building by the pre-existing Hindu temple constructions, whose moorties are - by definition even - the real yajanIya devatAs.
In TN and perhaps other parts of the South, the Agama (the entire Hindu tradition of Hindu temple building and pooja to the Hindu moorties of the Gods is meant, not just the Hindu texts that go by that name) is considered without beginning and eternal. Which I suppose underlines the ancientry of Hindu poojaa known to Tamizh Hindu memory. The tradition of Hindu's Agamic temple construction and rites to the Gods and home pooja have a 1-to-1 relation to the Vedas (well, the matter concerns the same Gods/religion, so this is but natural). Perhaps that's another reason why this tradition of worshipping the Hindu Gods (via moorti pooja) has the same definition as the Vedas? (I.e. "eternal" etc.) In any case, the word means the same as Nigama (Vedam), and another word for the Vedam is Agama itself. They're two forms/expressions of the same thing, so maybe that's why.
(cont)
+ The relation between the Hindu moorties in temples/homes and the same Gods during homam is straightforward. This is not some religion of invisible entities/plagiarised fictions. This is the religion of the Hindu Gods, which consists of very real and *visible* Gods. (Like the Daoist and Shinto religions, etc, from what I understand.) As another summarised excellently in a comment on the Raj2004 blog, the moorties of the Hindu Gods seen in temples = the sculpted versions of the same forms of the Gods *seen* [by some/many] during the Hindu Vedic sacrifice (not always fire sacrifice, as for some Vedic rites they use kumbhas of water by/in which the Gods are invoked, or so I was led to understand when I pried). The Moorties are sculpted in temples so that the forms of the Gods can be seen and remembered [and thereafter recognized] by all Hindus and may pervade their minds. So the everyday Hindu at home in his pooja area actually has direct access not only to his ancestral Gods and performs a form of Vedic ritual himself everyday (whenever he offers food to the Gods before he partakes of it), he takes part in a bigger Vedic yagnya at his temple. And the fact that his hRudayam during internal pooja is likened to the Vedic fire itself, seems to me to serve as literal proof for that MBh statement of Yudhisthira about how the Veda is seen in all 4 varNas. All Hindu society essentially. The Vedic fire in the hRudayam represents of course all the Hindu Gods, not just that Bhagavaan called SaptajihvaaH.
[Much of what I say above incl previous post about pooja/moorties is true of Daoist, Shinto and Greek etc religions also, because temples and moorties (and rituals prescribed in detail associated with this) - aka "idol worship" in alien terms - are highly typical of Gods-based Gods-centred religions, even though independently derived in all these cases.
While the Taoists etc don't have the Vedam of course, Daoists can be seen communing with their Gods through fire also: I have seen them burn their calligraphic writing containing <their business> in their fire, by which act their words go to their Gods. Also, the Daoists offer food to the Daoist Gods and hand out prasadam - which, as far as I have witnessed, has been fruit. The Daoists perform daily rituals and pooja to the Gods. Their pooja rooms are full of the moorties of their Gods, BTW. And these are just the *lay* traditional Daoists. Their poojaris etc perform even more rites.]
It is the Jains and Buddhists that need to show proof for where they got their rites from. The fact that they both insinuate that Hindus copied pooja from them instead, implies that they recognise similarities with *Hindu* pooja rituals - which are actually Vedic rituals. But what similarities do they mean? Hindus reciting Mantras* at the Gods? :grin: Singing at the Gods? What, *feeding* the Gods (=essence of homam) including mantra puShpam?
[* Mantras by definition are Vedic in origin and have no meaning outside Hindu religion. No one is going to pretend that OM is anything other than Vedic, right? It was Buddhism and Jainism that copied that too, just as they copied every other formulaic mantra format, down to adding "huM phaT svAhA" maalamantra type stuff. The very concept of Mantras are Vedic, not Buddhist or Jain. <- Another point that shows up who copycatted from whom. And even though they copied it, it's not theirs originally and is only found in their religion *because* they copied it from Hindus' religion. But OM refers exclusively to the trimoorti/parabrahman/sarvadevAH (see asvatha vRikSha/Lingam) alone, so OM etc has no meaning or sense outside the Hindus' religion, despite others' attempts at cloning it/grafting it onto other religions. And people can hardly try claiming mantras for ur-Shramanism because Vedam=mantras (by definition), so will they next be claiming all the Vedam for ur-Shramanism?
Of course the unspoken excuse offered by the Tamizh Buddhist site that was alluded to in the 2 posts ago is that Mantras are "all-Indian" and that Vedic=Hindu Gods similarly are suddenly "all-Indian" (in both cases owing to the long-term inculturation on these Hindu matters) and therefore belong to "everyone". So, magically, everything exclusively Hindu must be recognised - and the requirement is on Hindus, btw - as belonging "equally" to Buddhism/Jainism etc - no it doesn't. Yet the latter also have the right (again magically) to declare Hindu Kovils are supposedly "actually" Buddhist/Jain, and they will try to evict [some] Hindus from the nation as being "not native" while declaring themselves native via the ur-Shramanism fiction, and will invent sobstories about "persecution" - but let's not point out who actually persecuted whom - and oh yeah, they'll rewrite ancient Hindu authors and their sacred Hindu works as being actually "Jain/Buddhist" or at least so in idea/inspiration, and rewrite Indian history with the concocted ur-Shramanism all in order to claim Hindu Vedic teachings for ur-Shramanism and to thereafter declare that it was *Hindus/Hindu religion* who stole from ur-Shramanism instead.
Of course the whole ur-Shramanism thing was invented for missionary purposes. As is the purpose of all the inculturation/plagiarism too. The aim is both to try to end Hindu religion AND to try to claim Hindu stuff for their own religion in order to peddle it better.)]
[color="#0000FF"]+ The greatest absurdity however came when the JMF was trying to explain how temple worship originated in Jainism. After declaring that Temples could never follow from the Vedam/Vedic rites, the JMF proceeded to explain how temples derived from Jainism by reviewing the history of temples in Jainism itself. They mentioned an early type of Jain stupa and how this evolved into a building - the first type of Jain temple - whose name they admitted/blundered that it derived from "yajaniya devata".
And with that they shot themselves in the foot again. Because that phrase in itself underlines the relation between the Vedic fire sacrifice and poojaa.[/color]
YajanIya - as even I can see (but they couldn't) - is related to yagnya/Vedic fire sacrifice's ritualistic worship of the Gods. It's obvious, but let's do this by the book. So looking it up in an easy-access dictionary and it says: "related to sacrifice or worship".
Now, a devatA is of course not just any random Skt word but is particularly related to Vedic sacrifice: being the very Vedic Gods being invoked for a yagnya. A yajanIya devatA is of course the particular God (or Gods) who is the object of a particular sacrifice or pooja. [Also seen in how Hindu stotra preambles often tend to start off. You know, by declaring something ~like "asya <something> mantrasya, <something> RiShiH, <something> ChandaH, <something> devatA(H), followed by <key mantra outline>, and then the formulaic preamble usually ends with <devatA/H-name(s) prItyarthe + to acquire meaningful things> jape viniyogaH". The words mantra, RiShiH, ChandaH and of course devatA(H) - followed by mantra outline - are all Very Vedic, as is the purpose of reciting the stotra. The devatA is the subject of the stotram as well as the object of the stotram being recited, the one(s) being addressed.]
Of course, the silly JMF only knows to mention that yajanIya devatA means... the deity worshipped, by which they want to refer to their teerthankaras.
But "yajanIya devatA" is clearly in origin a reference to Hindu Vedic Gods, and means the *Hindu God* worshipped (both by pooja and yagnya). JMF admits that their earliest temple constructions derived their names from "YajanIya DevatA" and that this last means "deity to be worshipped", without realising that the phrase equally means the "deity of the VEDIC sacrifice". Its two equivalent meanings shows the one-to-one relationship in Hindus' religion between yagnya and temples/temple moorties/pooja. It actually also shows that the earliest Jain temple constructions were not just named after Vedic Hindu concepts but that practically, too, Jains were "inspired" in their temple building by the pre-existing Hindu temple constructions, whose moorties are - by definition even - the real yajanIya devatAs.
In TN and perhaps other parts of the South, the Agama (the entire Hindu tradition of Hindu temple building and pooja to the Hindu moorties of the Gods is meant, not just the Hindu texts that go by that name) is considered without beginning and eternal. Which I suppose underlines the ancientry of Hindu poojaa known to Tamizh Hindu memory. The tradition of Hindu's Agamic temple construction and rites to the Gods and home pooja have a 1-to-1 relation to the Vedas (well, the matter concerns the same Gods/religion, so this is but natural). Perhaps that's another reason why this tradition of worshipping the Hindu Gods (via moorti pooja) has the same definition as the Vedas? (I.e. "eternal" etc.) In any case, the word means the same as Nigama (Vedam), and another word for the Vedam is Agama itself. They're two forms/expressions of the same thing, so maybe that's why.