Post 1/2
All the Hindu temples and Hindu temple moorties that Buddhists have since a recent decade suddenly started to claim as having been "originally Buddhist"* (which is purely an attempt to missionise on the Hindus attached to those Hindu temples) are the exact same Hindu temples and Hindu moorties that Jains of the Jain Minority Forum (JMF) are claiming were "originally Jain" instead.
[* A list of these Hindu temples etc can be seen in an earlier post in this thread wherein Rhytha pasted the allegations made by some Buddhism peddlers. Note: the peddlers had merely plagiarised their claims from anti-Hindu pamphlets compiled by some Sri Lankan Buddhist monks who clearly did not know what they were talking about but didn't let their ignorance stop them.]
Note that the *same* Hindu temples and moorties are claimed by both Buddhism AND Jainism: everything from Tirupati and Puri Jagannatha, various named Hindu Kovils in TN, down to the same general claim of "thousands of Hindu temples in TN" were "originally Buddhist" (as per the Buddhist claimants) and magically also "originally Jain" (as per the Jain claimants).
By simple logic then, even someone who didn't know any more about the case can already conclude that at least one of the two - Buddhism or Jainism - is lying here, and compulsively. And people who know a bit more about the Hindu temples in question can further disqualify both claimants as compulsive liars: they don't know what they're talking about. Perhaps their ignorance is understandable: SL Buddhists from around the 1970s are not likely to know much if anything about Hindu temples in TN India and just wanted to sound convincing to their SL readership, just as the relevant JMF members were situated in a state far away from TN which is not their ancestral state either. The latter's aim was merely to claim that dravoodianism=TN=Jain "originally" and that "therefore" all Tamizh Hindu Kovils were supposedly Jain too.
But these are all (actually, demonstrably) Hindu Kovils. And just as in the past - when Hindu lineages of temple constructors and moorti sculptors built Hindu kovils to the Hindu Gods - it is still Hindus who continue to build similar temples in SE Asia (Malaysia, SL etc) today. Not Jains or Buddhists.
However, the JMF made another typical assertion to prop up their claims: that pooja and temples "idol worship" have nothing to do with Vedic religion, declaring that clearly pooja/"idol worship" was copied from Jainism, down to the use of flowers and moorties. The JMF even said that pooja was a "dravidian" word where 'dravidian' pu meant flowers, even after in brackets they knew to relate pu back to Skt puShpa (flowers).
Yet, what all Hindoos know (and Jains etc wouldn't):
+ Bhagavad Gita already knew of the established Hindu mode of worship where Hindu Gods are offered flowers, fruit and liquid (coming right after a verse mentioning the PuruShottama as the bhokta of the yagnya). Meanwhile, the Gita of course does not know of Buddhisms or Jainisms, for obvious reasons.
The JMF could not pretend that the famous verse in the Gita didn't exist and so resorted to twisting the entry to mean that by the Gita's time, Hindus had essentially copied pooja from Jains and so it was recognised as a mode of worship. Indeed, they hold up the entry in the Gita as "proof" for their extreme speculation. :blinks:
+ Pooja in Hindu religion is directly related to a Vedic homam. With the fire, the Hindu Gods are invoked. Oblations (food and liquid) and mantras are offered the Gods via Agni, and hymns and songs (from the saamaveda) are used to worship them. A homam is essentially the act of feeding and worshipping the Hindu Gods, just what Hindus do in temples with moorties.
And this is exactly what the Hindoos do during their home poojas too: offering food and literal puShpas to the Hindu Gods and adoring the Hindu Gods by reciting stotras and singing to them. The literal pushpas are equivalent to mantra puShpas (which is also the name of a veda sukta which some Hindus use during their daily pooja). So every Hindu - absolutely *every* Hindu - doing pooja at home to their images of the Hindu Gods is performing a homam as it were, it's just on a smaller scale, that's all. (Also when Hindoos meditate as they do in one kind of internal yoga: IIRC this is literally described as an internal yagnya in Hindu tantra texts; again: the agni in the hRidayam is offered worship and likened to the Moorty or Shivalingam.) Every Hindu attending the worship of the moorties of the Gods in Hindu temples is partaking in a yagnya but in another form. The Gods are invoked in the moorties, just as they are invoked during a yagnya and become present, then the Gods are offered the usual worship of mantras or stotras, inundated in mantras with flowers/coins/milk etc. The usual established list of Offerings, including any special ones that might be prescribed for that Temple and Moorty. I think regular Hindus (people like me) substitute traditional Hindu songs about the Gods - not just carnatic ones, as traditional "folk" songs about the Gods count the same - for the Sama portion. Not all of us can say mantras willy-nilly, but we may all toss flowers during pooja [and say the names of the Gods (=itself mantras) along with this] and this act is apparently regarded the equivalent in pooja context as reciting Veda mantras to the Gods during a homam.
(cont.)
All the Hindu temples and Hindu temple moorties that Buddhists have since a recent decade suddenly started to claim as having been "originally Buddhist"* (which is purely an attempt to missionise on the Hindus attached to those Hindu temples) are the exact same Hindu temples and Hindu moorties that Jains of the Jain Minority Forum (JMF) are claiming were "originally Jain" instead.
[* A list of these Hindu temples etc can be seen in an earlier post in this thread wherein Rhytha pasted the allegations made by some Buddhism peddlers. Note: the peddlers had merely plagiarised their claims from anti-Hindu pamphlets compiled by some Sri Lankan Buddhist monks who clearly did not know what they were talking about but didn't let their ignorance stop them.]
Note that the *same* Hindu temples and moorties are claimed by both Buddhism AND Jainism: everything from Tirupati and Puri Jagannatha, various named Hindu Kovils in TN, down to the same general claim of "thousands of Hindu temples in TN" were "originally Buddhist" (as per the Buddhist claimants) and magically also "originally Jain" (as per the Jain claimants).
By simple logic then, even someone who didn't know any more about the case can already conclude that at least one of the two - Buddhism or Jainism - is lying here, and compulsively. And people who know a bit more about the Hindu temples in question can further disqualify both claimants as compulsive liars: they don't know what they're talking about. Perhaps their ignorance is understandable: SL Buddhists from around the 1970s are not likely to know much if anything about Hindu temples in TN India and just wanted to sound convincing to their SL readership, just as the relevant JMF members were situated in a state far away from TN which is not their ancestral state either. The latter's aim was merely to claim that dravoodianism=TN=Jain "originally" and that "therefore" all Tamizh Hindu Kovils were supposedly Jain too.
But these are all (actually, demonstrably) Hindu Kovils. And just as in the past - when Hindu lineages of temple constructors and moorti sculptors built Hindu kovils to the Hindu Gods - it is still Hindus who continue to build similar temples in SE Asia (Malaysia, SL etc) today. Not Jains or Buddhists.
However, the JMF made another typical assertion to prop up their claims: that pooja and temples "idol worship" have nothing to do with Vedic religion, declaring that clearly pooja/"idol worship" was copied from Jainism, down to the use of flowers and moorties. The JMF even said that pooja was a "dravidian" word where 'dravidian' pu meant flowers, even after in brackets they knew to relate pu back to Skt puShpa (flowers).
Yet, what all Hindoos know (and Jains etc wouldn't):
+ Bhagavad Gita already knew of the established Hindu mode of worship where Hindu Gods are offered flowers, fruit and liquid (coming right after a verse mentioning the PuruShottama as the bhokta of the yagnya). Meanwhile, the Gita of course does not know of Buddhisms or Jainisms, for obvious reasons.
The JMF could not pretend that the famous verse in the Gita didn't exist and so resorted to twisting the entry to mean that by the Gita's time, Hindus had essentially copied pooja from Jains and so it was recognised as a mode of worship. Indeed, they hold up the entry in the Gita as "proof" for their extreme speculation. :blinks:
+ Pooja in Hindu religion is directly related to a Vedic homam. With the fire, the Hindu Gods are invoked. Oblations (food and liquid) and mantras are offered the Gods via Agni, and hymns and songs (from the saamaveda) are used to worship them. A homam is essentially the act of feeding and worshipping the Hindu Gods, just what Hindus do in temples with moorties.
And this is exactly what the Hindoos do during their home poojas too: offering food and literal puShpas to the Hindu Gods and adoring the Hindu Gods by reciting stotras and singing to them. The literal pushpas are equivalent to mantra puShpas (which is also the name of a veda sukta which some Hindus use during their daily pooja). So every Hindu - absolutely *every* Hindu - doing pooja at home to their images of the Hindu Gods is performing a homam as it were, it's just on a smaller scale, that's all. (Also when Hindoos meditate as they do in one kind of internal yoga: IIRC this is literally described as an internal yagnya in Hindu tantra texts; again: the agni in the hRidayam is offered worship and likened to the Moorty or Shivalingam.) Every Hindu attending the worship of the moorties of the Gods in Hindu temples is partaking in a yagnya but in another form. The Gods are invoked in the moorties, just as they are invoked during a yagnya and become present, then the Gods are offered the usual worship of mantras or stotras, inundated in mantras with flowers/coins/milk etc. The usual established list of Offerings, including any special ones that might be prescribed for that Temple and Moorty. I think regular Hindus (people like me) substitute traditional Hindu songs about the Gods - not just carnatic ones, as traditional "folk" songs about the Gods count the same - for the Sama portion. Not all of us can say mantras willy-nilly, but we may all toss flowers during pooja [and say the names of the Gods (=itself mantras) along with this] and this act is apparently regarded the equivalent in pooja context as reciting Veda mantras to the Gods during a homam.
(cont.)