The crowd of some 180 people at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) shouted out “Jai Jinendra!”, or “Victory to the Lord of the Jinas!”, before embarking to find some of the only Jain artefacts in a Singaporean museum.
This free excursion was organised by Singapore Jain Religious Society (SJRS) and involved guided tours for its members to the Let’s Play and Ancient Religions exhibits at ACM. While Let’s Play is only around till June 5, the Ancient Religions exhibit is a permanent fixture.
Let’s Play featured the origins of games like chess, carrom and snakes and ladders, which originated from a game rooted in Jainism, Gyan Chaupar, which means game of knowledge.
In this version, the game aims to teach about morals with the goal of reaching moksha, or the spiritual rebirth of an individual. If they landed on good acts, they would ascend the board, but if they landed on acts of sin, such as pride and greed, they would slide down a snake’s body.
This was the second SJRS event for Ms Priya and Ms Kriti Jain, a mother-daughter duo, “We only started attending SJRS events last year because I wanted to practice religion more at my age,” said Ms Priya, 47, a former middle school teacher.
Ms Kriti, 23, an engineer, said: “I think these events help me learn more about my culture more informally, rather than sitting down in a class.”
Mr Deepak Mehta, 49, is a frequenter of SJRS events, having met a lot of his close friends through them. “It’s nice to be in a room surrounded by people who are from the same community as you,” he said.
He came along with his wife and son, Manav Mehta, whose favourite part of the day was the idols in the Ancient Religions exhibit. “I liked it because it depicted the old times and taught us more about the community,” said Manav, 13.
The two artefacts from this exhibit that stood out were the statue of the Jain goddess Saraswati and the painting of the Lokapurusha or the Cosmic Man.
Mr Parag Desai, 49, is a management committee member and a past president of SJRS, working with the society since 2000.
He was one of the main organisers of this event, aiming to show members the presence of Jainism in Singapore. “So many of them didn’t know that these artefacts were in Singapore, we organised this event to show them that our history is also here,” he said.
