Mūrti-pūjaka
A living tradition within Śvetāmbara. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Mūrti-pūjaka is a living tradition within Śvetāmbara. Also written Murtipujak, Deravāsī, Mandirmārgī, image-worshippers.
Origin
No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. Jainpedia: the largest Śvetāmbara subsect. The term means 'worshipper of images', distinguishing them from the non-image-worshipping Sthānakavāsīs and Terāpanthins; Jainpedia states this nomenclature 'emerged between the 15th and 17th centuries'. All Mūrtipūjakas recognise 45 canonical scriptures, wear white monastic robes, and trace monastic lineage to Mahāvīra's disciple Sudharman — 'except for the Upakeśa-gaccha'. No founding year given.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Mūrti-pūjaka.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-murti-pujaka.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-murti-pujaka-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Mūrti-pūjaka},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-murti-pujaka},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.