Tenth Wonder Domestication And Reform In Medieval Svetambara Jainism

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/269515/1

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PAUL DUNDAS
THE TENTH WONDER: DOMESTICATION AND REFORM IN MEDIEVAL
SVETAMBARA JAINISM
In the eleventh century A.D., Jinavallabha, one of the most eminent sūris of the Kharatara Gaccha, a Svetāmbara Jain reforming sect, wrote a jeremiad lamenting the state of the Jain religion. The Jains share with the Hindus the notion of the Kaliyuga, the Bad World Age 3, albeit visualising it as being more pervasive than do the Hindus, since for the Jains the Kaliyuga penetrates Benares which, according to Saiva tradition, is immune from external influence 4. However, Jinavallabha viewed the contemporary situation as so desperate that he could only explain it as resulting from either a particularly freakish period (hunda) of the Kaliyuga or some strange and malign planetary conjunction. Hordes of barbarians, in this case, the Moslems, had appeared, the Jain community (sangha) had become corrupt and people were beginning to league with the « king of delusion » so that, in short,
1. Suri is basically a term for teacher ». See S. B. DEO, History of Jaina Monachism, Poona, 1956, p. 232. In the present paper, the term refers to the head of a sectarian division (gaccha)..
2. JINAVALLABHASORI, Sanghapattaka, in L. B. GANDHI (ed.), Three Apabhramsa Works of Jinadattasūri, Gaekwad's Oriental Series 37, Baroda, 1967, pp. 81-6.
3. Also called « the uneven time » (duḥşamā) or « the fifth spoke of the wheel » (pañcamāra).
4. See JINAPRABHASŪRI, Vividhatirthakalpa, Singhi Jain Series 10, Santiniketan, 1934, p. 74, lines 14-16.

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Jinavallabha had to conclude that the scriptural prophecy of the tenth wonder had come to pass 5.
The ten wonders (āścarya) are a series of astonishing events which take place in this current era (avasarpiņi), the tenth of them being that honour will be paid to undisciplined monks who are prone to the destruction of life-forms, owning 'possessions and practising unchastity 6. The Kharatara Gaccha, whose origins can be located in the eleventh century A.D. and whose area of activity was Rajasthan and Gujarat, gained its sectarian identity from its attempts to reform what it regarded as corrupt practices and to revive the ancient way of life prescribed in the Jain scriptures. The fact that Vardhamāna, the first sūri of the sect, is described in the Kharatara chronicles as being appointed to his rank under a banyan tree suggests that the Kharataras saw themselves as replicating the jinakalpa, the mode of life followed long ago by the tirtharkaras and their disciples 7, while the designation « forest-dwelling », occasionally used to describe themselves 8, served to differentiate them from the caityavāsin monks who lived a permanent and sedentary life in temples (caitya ') or monasteries (matha), which were part of temple complexes 10 and had been built specially for them, ignoring the scriptural injunctions about
5. Sanghapattaka 30, 39-40.
6. For the ten wonders, see Sthānāngasutra 777 = Sthânăngasutra and Samavāyāngasūtra with Abhayadevasūri's commentary, originally edited by Sāgarānandasūri and re-edited by Muni Jambüvijaya, Delhi, 1985, pp. 349-50. See also PADMANABH S. JAINI, The Jaina Path of Purification, Delhi, 1979, p. 23.
7. See JINAVIJAYA (ed.), Kharataragacchapattavalisangraha, Calcutta, 1932, p. 43. For taking the jinakalpa under a banyan tree, see Deo, History of Jaina Monachism, p. 374.
8. See, for example, Sumatiganin's biography of Jineśvarasūri contained in his commentary on Jinadattasüri's Ganadharasārdhaśataka published in the appendix to Jinavijaya's introduction to his edition of Jineśvarasūri's Kathākoşaprakarana, Singhi Jain Series 11, Bombay, 1949, p. 10, line 23, and in the Vrddhācāryaprabandhāvali, in JINAVIJAYA (ed.), Kharataragacchabrhadgurvāvali, Singhi Jain Series 42, Bombay, 1956, p. 89, line 2.
9. caitya can mean, most broadly, holy place or object.
10. See Jinadattasüri's Sandehadolāvaliprakarana, Marway, 1918, p. 13a, line 3: mathăder api caityäntargatatvāt. Sandehadolävaliprakarana pp. 6-20 contains a discussion of the differences between the various types of caitya and ordinary building (ayatana).

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the wandering life and the temporary lodging (vasati) appropriate to it, failing to observe correct rules for alms-begging and avoidance of injury to life-forms, and appropriating temple funds and property for their own uses, including the staging of rituals in a conspicuously Hindu idiom 11
Jineśvarasūri (eleventh cent. A. D.), Vardhamāna's most eminent disciple, attempted to explain in his Kathākoșaprakarana how the noble and exalted way of living portrayed in the scriptures had come to be perverted in this way 12
« In the period of the tenth wonder, after Mahāvīra's death, many monks broke away from the wandering life. Initially, when they had completed a stay of a month (māsakappa) in a particular place, they did not move on (immediately after), until it reached the stage that they did not move on even when the rain-retreat was over. Then their lay supporters (sejjāyara) became estranged from them so that, if any monks did happen to go forth upon the wandering life (kaham vi nihariya), they did not give them lodging (vasahi) again. So when the monks were thwarted in this way, they began to consider how they might get permanent lodging and devised a plan so that householders might be encouraged to build temples which would bring about such lodging, even though a breach of rules about begging for alms (anākammiya) would occur. They instructed their followers thus: if someone makes an image (of a Jina) no more than the size of a thumb, then he will attain deliverance through the gradual achieving of enlightenment after a series of happy rebirths. But whoever constructs a temple will have still greater rewards. Therefore, sirs, build temples, and we shall strive in those areas in which you are not competent '13. So these disaffected
11. Representative of the Kharatara view of caityavāsin behaviour is Jinadatta's Carcari. See also the same author's Upadeśarasāyana 28 (against the profit-making role of temples) and 38-9 (forbidding various types of temple ritual on the grounds that they are not described in scripture). Both of these texts are edited in GANDHI, Three Apabhramśa Works.
12. Kathäkoşaprakarana, p. 131, lines 1-11 and p. 133, lines 16-19.
13. jam bhe na pahuppai, tattha amhe jaissämo. I take jaissāmo to be the equivalent of Sanskrit yatisyāmahe,

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ascetics, who got their livelihood from their external appearance only and who were attached to this world and uninterested in the next, had many temples built in that particular region. And after having temples built which were repositories for images alone, they had well appointed (susilittha) monasteries constructed nearby and lived there at their ease ».
The institution of living near or, as it subsequently became, within temples is thus ascribed to the chicanery of lax monks and the unwitting collusion of their lay followers. While the Kharatara Gaccha did not actually proscribe the erection of temples 14, as a sect such as the Sthānakvāsis were to do, its leaders clearly felt considerable unease about their role in the corruption of the sangha. Jinadattasüri (twelfth-thirteenth cent.) gives a list of negative motives for building temples, referring to Queen Kuntalā 15, who, as Jineśvara recounts, attempted, because of her pride in her own temple, to restrict the practice of devotions in the temples built by her co-queens and, as a result of her own lack of true devotion, was reborn as a black bitch who lived in that same temple 16.
Kharatara tradition has it that in 1024 A.D. Jineśvarasūri defeated in debate a caityavāsin monk named Sūra at Anahillapațţana in Gujarat in front of King Durlabha, an event which in some accounts is said to have led to the epithet Kharatara, « Particularly Quick-witted », being bestowed upon Jineśvara and, subsequently, the sect 17. While we may treat with some suspicion the arguments of Dharmasāgara (sixteenth cent.) who, as a stern advocate of the supremacy of his sect, the Tapā Gaccha, suggested that the debate, so important to the Kharatara chroniclers, had never taken place at all 18, the fullest account we possess, that of
14. See JINADATTASORI, Carcari 15. . 15. Sandehadolāvaliprakarana, p. 7a. 16. Kathäkoşaprakarana, p. 129, lines 30-2 to p. 130, line 14.
17. See W. SCHUBRING, Die Lehre der Jainas, Berlin and Leipzig, 1935, p. 47.
18. Pravacanapariksā, Surat, 1937, pp. 270-1.

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Sumatigaṇin, dates from about one hundred and fifty years after the event and is obviously polemical in intention 19. Nonetheless, it does give some idea of how. Kharataras viewed the caityavāsin justification of their position.
Sūra, the caityavāsin spokesman, is portrayed as arguing about the nature of monastic dwelling rather than the length of stay within it. Lodging in property provided by laymen, he contends, is fraught with peril since it will of necessity bring about contact with women and breach of chastity, while staying in gardens and similar places described in the scriptures has become impractical because of physical and moral dangers brought about by the Kaliyuga. By living in temples, monks can avoid contact with women, and, since temples are innately pure, having been built for the tirthankaras, no impurity need ensue by monks eating food there. Furthermore, if monks did not live in temples, there would effectively be no Jainism, because, owing to the Kaliyuga, the laity had ceased to be interested in the upkeep and maintenance of sacred places.
Sumati portrays Sūra as stating in the course of the debate that the tirtharkaras promulgated no fixed rules about anything except sexual intercourse, and even that is deemed permissible if engaged in without passion, and, also, as concluding his argument by referring to the existence in scripture of exceptions to general rules. Leaving aside until later the validity of these « assertions » we can, to some extent, glimpse here the contrived and artificial nature of Sumati's account, for Jineśvara had already employed a statement virtually identical to Sūra's conclusion in the climax to his reworking of the story of Kuvalayaprabha in his Kathākoşaprakarana. This cautionary tale, which first occurs in the late canonical text, the Mahānisīthasūtra, describes how the great scholar and ascetic, Kuvalayaprabha, on not being able to answer convincingly when asked a doctrinal question by some caityavāsin monks, eventually had to invoke the principle that scripture was
19. See the appendix to Jinavijaya's introduction to the Kathakosaprakarana, pp. 8-22.

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not fixed in meaning but composed of rules and exceptions and, as a consequence, was condemned to endless rebirth 20.
However, this oblique attempt to link Sūra to Kuvalayaprabha as a paradigm of corruption should not obscure the fact that the institution of temple-dwelling was not followed solely by marginal and degraded monks who were only nominally ascetics, for as eminent a figure as Haribhadra (sixth cent. A.D.?), their link with whom the Kharataras continually stress 21 and whose apparent opposition to temple-dwelling is often referred to by modern writers 22, states firmly in his şodaśaka that monks are permitted to live in temples, implicitly supporting the practice elsewhere in his writings 23. Moreover, the great canonical commentator, Abhayadevasūri (eleventh cent.), whom the Kharatara chroniclers tried desperately to fit into their teacher lineage, holds that the building of temples, far from being a cause for unease, as it was for Jineśvara and Jinadatta, is, in fact, a form of spiritual sacrifice (bhāvayajña) 24.
Attempts to explain the origin of temple-dwelling have tended either to delineate a progression rather than isolate a cause, as in the assertion that monks who originally lived in the forests changed to living in caves which eventually led to fixed residence 25, or, alternatively, to be too vague, as in Schubring's suggestion that canonical descriptions of religious discourses taking
20. For Kuvalayaprabha, see J. DELEU and W. SCHUBRING, Studien zum Mahānisiha: Kapitel 1-5, Hamburg, 1963, pp. 200-1. The Mahānisithasūtra does not occur in all lists of canonical texts, but was authoritative for the Kharatara Gaccha. For Jineśvara's reworking of the story of Kuvalayaprabha, see Kathākoşaprakarana, pp. 131-5.
21. See, for example, JINADATTA, Carcari 12, 14. I pass over the question of the existence of two Haribhadras.
22. See, for example, JAINI, The Jaina Path of Purification, p. 308.
23. See R. WILLIAMS, Haribhadra, in BSOAS, 28 (1965), pp. 101-11. Williams demonstrates that the Sambodhaprakarana, a text frequently cited to establish Haribhadra's anti-caityavāsin credentials, most likely dates from the middle of the twelfth century.
24. See Abhayadeva on Sthānāngasūtra 125 = Jambūvijaya's re-edition (see footnote 6), p. 73, section 3. Abhayadeva also quotes Haribhadra to the effect that destruction of life-forms brought about by lay people in worshipping the Jinas (e.g. through building temples) is purified.
25. See A. GHOSH (ed.), Jaina Art and Architecture, New Delhi, 1976, p. 38.

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place near temples proved the main inspiration for permanent dwelling near these places 26. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no evidence other than sectarian propaganda which could throw light upon the convictions of caityavāsin monks, and I would therefore like to draw attention to a short text, recently published on the basis of a single manuscript, entitled Dānādiprakarana (= DP), « A Treatise on Religious Giving etc. », written by an ācārya named Sūra 27. As noted above, Sūra was the name of the caityavāsin whom Kharatara sources claim to have been the opponent of Jineśvara at Anahillapattana. The editors of the DP, without mentioning the debate, state in their introduction that there are grounds for assigning the text to around 1030 or 1040, which would roughly fit the traditional Kharatara dating of the event. It is not clear whether Sūra is the same as the Sūra who is regarded as one of the « exalters of the doctrine » (prabhāvaka) and whose life is recounted by Prabhācandra (13th cent.) in his Prabhāvakacarita 28, but while there are grounds for suspecting that Sūra, the author of the DP, has, as an influential monk, been retrospectively assigned a role in the debate to provide Jineśvara with a suitably eminent opponent to controvert, I do not regard it as necessary to establish his identity, since there is sufficient evidence in the text itself to suggest that reforming groups such as the Kharatara Gaccha could not have found him orthodox.
The DP is, to a large extent, a conventional text, with much standard praise of the Jain path. Its main theme, however, is, as its title proclaims, dāna, religious giving, and Sūra attempts to establish this as the main structuring element within Jainism and as the form of religious activity most appropriate to the Kaliyuga (DP 7.82) 29. Denial of dāna betokens complete ignorance of scriptural tradition (DP 7.1) and, indeed, the entire path to liberation
26. Die Lehre der Jainas, p. 47. 27. Ed. A. M. Bhojak and N.J. Shah, L.D. Series 90, Ahmedabad, 1983.
28. Ed. Jinavijaya, Singhi Jain Series 13, Bombay, 1940, pp. 152-60. Prabhācandra does not mention the debate. Note that, while verses 20-5 depict Süra as sitting in a temple watching a dancing-girl, a typical caityaväsin practice according to the Kharataras, verse 142 describes him as lodging in an upäśraya, not a caitya, when visiting King Bhoja.
29. Not an exclusively Jain notion. Compare Manusmrti 1.86.

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would cease without dāna, for liberation can only come about by giving alms to monks and money to the community as a whole (DP 4.17; 6.9). Wealth bestowed upon the community becomes endless (DP 6.7), the building of temples brings great material benefits and, at the same time enables their builders to move along the spiritual path (DP 4.18-22; 4.26). In general, Sūra argues that dāna should be the principle activity of the laity because other forms of religious practice such as the performance of austerities, morality and meditation are too difficult (DP 6.91; 7.116). Laymen should, instead, realise the great rewards to be gained from supporting the sangha (DP 6.96-99), which is the single most important thing taught by the tirthařkaras (DP 7.24) and which by involving compassion and, therefore, ahimsā, encompasses and lies at the heart of the Jain religion.
Sūra accepts, along with the sūris of the Kharatara gaccha, the existence of a monastic community which is weak in religious attainment owing to the Kaliyuga (DP 7.105), a development predicted by the tirthankaras themselves (DP 6.43). However, Sūra's attitude to such monks is rather different, for he attempts to show that the monk, as tangible symbol of everything the Jain religion represents, should not be subjected to petty considerations of merit and worth (DP 7.106). This is made clear at DP 6.50: .
« those fools, who reject a monk appropriate to the current age (i.e. the Kaliyuga) and seek an alternative good monk (susādhu) as a recipient of their dāna etc., cannot in fact find the second type and so attain a bad rebirth ».
Those who see lax behaviour and censure it are themselves behaving abominably (DP 6.44-5), for good will towards one's coreligionist is vital (DP 6.55) 30. A wise man who sees a monk who has only one small but positive quality should honour him as if he were replete with qualities (DP 6.67). The whole path of dharma disappears without monks, so even a monk who has fallen away from the correct way should be revered (DP 6.46), in the same way as a king's messenger is honoured even though he in no way resembles the king (DP 6.19). As it is impossible to recognise
.
30. Specifically contradicted by Sandehadolāvalīprakarana, p. 52b.

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adequately those who have real qualities and those who do not, every monk should be treated with equal respect (DP 7.112), and religious gifts should be made out of compassion to those monks who manifestly lack qualities (DP 7.107). Indicative of Sūra's standpoint is his description of Mahāvīra's first significant act as a mendicant, which was, one and a half years after renunciation, to bestow his robe upon a brahman, interpreted by the DP not as signifying indifference to worldly possessions, but as an act of dāna, all the more meritorious because of the unworthiness of the recipient (DP 7.16) 31 Sūra sums up his position at DP 7.109:
« one's religious activity should centre around the affairs of the temple. This is the highest form of disgust with evil. In my opinion, the qualities of those ascetics who are of pure faith (Subhadrs), even though deficient (in other respects), are the unequalled receptacles (of the dāna) of the world. What else is to be sought after? ».
We are not, of course, in a position to assess the faith or sincerity of monks who lived in the eleventh century, but a reading of the DP, relatively short though it is, suggests that Sūra was arguing for the unity of the Svetāmbara Jain sangha despite the manifest existence within it of differing types of religious behaviour and attainment, and, in particular, attempting to exalt dāna above all other forms of religious practice. I would suggest that the widespread building of temples and the concomitant custom of permanent dwelling by monks in or near them, which was one of the main characteristics of medieval Svetāmbara Jainism, can best be seen as the inevitable result of the performance of dāna and as an extension of the giving and receiving of food, clothes and lodging, which is the fundamental mode of interaction between monk and layman, built into Jainism from the very beginning 32. This would then appear to be very close to a phenomenon in Theravāda Buddhism, which Carrithers has called « domestication », whereby a lack of central authority in the Buddhist community
31. The story is post-canonical. See JAINI, The Jaina Path of Purification, p. 13.
32. Note, however, that dāna is not a significant theme in the Ardhamāgadhi canon.

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and the close relationship between monk and layman led to the monk espousing lay values and attitudes, so that the ideal of social and ritual service, which could only be fulfilled by living in monasteries near towns and villages, achieved ascendancy over, without ever totally supplanting, the ancient paradigm of the forest-dwelling ascetic 33.
It will be recalled that Sūra is alleged by Sumati to have claimed that scripture is composed of rules and exceptions and, indeed, according to Carrithers 34, a central feature of Buddhist domestication is the loosening of laws of monastic behaviour, A particularly pertinent Jain example can be found in the versecommentary (bhāsya) (third-fourth cent. A.D.) on the highly authoritative Niśīthasūtra, «the emissary from the city of nirvāņa » 35, where several reasons are given why a monk might be permitted to cease from the normative, wandering life and live permanently (nicca) in one place:
« when there is inauspiciousness, when there is famine (omoyariya), when there is great danger due to oppression by a king, in illness and when there is lack of correct behaviour and study >> 36
According to Jinadāsa's (seventh cent.?) prose commentary (cūrni) on Niśīthabhāşya 1024, there is no sin in living somewhere on a permanent basis in order to increase qualities such as knowledge. If leading the wandering life in the wide world (bahih) causes decrease of knowledge, then one should avoid it. While elsewhere (verse 1016) the Niśithabhāşya is more guarded, pointing out that nicca need not always mean « permanent », this relaxation of the rules about monastic lodging in such an authoritative text, though doubtless made with the best intentions, must have pro
33. See M. CARRITHERS, The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka: a historical and anthropological study, Delhi, 1983, pp. 139-41. See also I. STRENSKI, Оn generalised exchange and the domestication of the sangha, in «Man » (n.s.), 18 (1983), pp. 463-73, and Carrithers' reply in «Man » (n.s.), 19 (1984), pp. 321-2.
34. See CARRITHERS, The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka, p. 141. 35. Sanghapattaka 9.
36. Nisīthabhäsya 1021. I have used the edition of the Nisithasūtra, with bhāşya and cūrni, by Amaramuni and Muni Kanhaiyalal, four volumes, Agra, 1957-1960.

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vided ample justification for the defence of the institution of temple-dwelling which reforming monks in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were to find so objectionable 37
If Jineśvara presents the building of temples and the lavish pursuit of dāna by the laity in his times as deeply entrenched examples of popular behaviour followed down through the ages 38, and Jinavallabha and Jinadatta bemoan the coming to pass of the tenth wonder, nonetheless the caityavāsin monks seem to have been all but eliminated by the sūris of the Kharatara Gaccha, lingering on in subsequent centuries only in severely attenuated and mutated form 39. An examination of the hagiographies of the Kharataras suggests that the sūris were able to halt the process of domestication taking place in Rajasthan and Gujarat partly by the imposition of their own charismatic authority established in debate, and by what the hagiographers describe as the performance of miracles and feats of prescience, rather than through any marked adherence to the « great truths » of Jainism. Of perhaps even more importance, however, is the role of scripture in this process of reform, for a crucial theme in these hagiographies is the linking of the temple-dwelling heresy with ignorance, misuse or travesty of sacred texts. A few of the more noteworthy examples will demonstrate this.
In Jinapāla's account of the debate at Anahillapattana, Jineśvara claims emphatically at the outset that his authority to speak rests upon the ancient scriptures rather than upon the results of
37. JINAVALLABHA, Sanghapattaka 9, points out that, while the Niśithasūtra certainly does contain various rules and exceptions, it nowhere says anything about living in temples. This strongly suggests that it actually was invoked to justify temple-dwelling. Deo, History of Jaina Monachism, pp. 158-9, points out that monks were allowed to live in temples during the rainy period.
38. See Kathākoşaprakarana, p. 128, lines 18-20 and 31-2, and compare also Carcari 31. The Kharataras did not, of course, suggest that däna was in itself improper. See Upadeśarasāyana 30, 61-2.
39. See M. B. JHAVERI, A Comparative and Critical Study of Mantraśāstra, Ahmedabad, 1944, p. 208. But note also U. P. SHAH, A forgotten chapter in the history of Svetämbara Jain church, or, a documentary epigraph from Mount Satrunjaya, « Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay » (n.s.), 30 (1955), pp. 100-113.

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contemporary disputes 40, while the decisive factor in Jineśvara's final victory is said to be his recourse to the Daśavaikālikasūtra, whose contents his opponents try to conceal 41, an act tantamount to the perversion of the whole of scripture since, according to tradition, this work was composed by Sayyambhava as a summary of the canon 42. On a similar occasion in Kharatara history, Jinapatisūri (twelfth-thirteenth cent. A.D.) catches his opponent, the caityavāsin Pradyumna, deliberately omitting a passage from an authoritative text which contradicts his position 43. Here, as in comparable situations in Hindu hagiography, the source and outcome of debate rest upon scripture 44. The Daśavaikālikasūtra plays an important role in the early life of Jinavallabha. He was originally the pupil of a caityavāsin who, despite possessing a copy of the scriptural canon, refused to allow his pupils to see it. It was only after clandestinely inspecting the scriptures, and in particular the Daśavaikālikasūtra, that Jinavallabha realised that his master had been deceiving him and that he was on the incorrect path 45. Here, the impetus to correct spiritual practice is portrayed as stemming from knowledge of sacred writings, and scripture is used to demonstrate that the caityavāsins were, in Carrithers' phrase 46, «betray[ing] the principles enshrined in the charter » of the Jain sangha. Yet, at the same time, it must, be admitted that Süra in the DP seems to display an equal concern about the importance of scripture (āgama) and its injunctions (vidhi) (e.g. DP 5.75-81), and it might be worth considering whether there was any incompatibility between the two sides' view of what scripture represented.
40. Kharataragacchabrhadgurvävali, p. 3.
41. Ibid., and Sumati's account, p. 19 (see footnote 19). Daśavaikälikasūtra 8.51 is cited in both accounts.
42. See W. SCHUBRING, in « Kleine Schriften >, Wiesbaden, 1977, pp. 111-2.
43. Kharataragacchabshadgurvāvali, pp. 41-2. The text in question was the Oghaniryukti.
44. See P. GRANOFF, Scholars and wonderworkers: some remarks on the role of the supernatural in philosophical contests in Vedānta hagiography, in JAOS, 105 (1985), pp. 459-67.
45. Kharataragacchabshadgurvāvali, p. 8 and Kharataragacchapattāvalisangraha, p. 25.
46. In «Man » (n.s.), 19 (1984), p. 320.

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An important, if often insufficiently acknowledged, problem in Jainism is that the list of forty-five texts which has come to be accepted by Svetāmbaras (with the exception of the Sthānakvāsis) and by Western scholars as representing the definitive scriptural canon is, in fact, merely one of a number of possible lists and groupings. We do not possess the names of the texts redacted at the final council of Valabhi (fifth cent. A.D.) and, in the medieval period, there seems to have been a variety of rival textual groupings, as well as a tradition of lost scriptures 47. That this was a contentious and longstanding issue can be seen by the vigour with which the Kharatara scholar, Samayasundara, writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century, attempted to defend the forty-five text grouping and to explain why there were so many discrepancies and disagreements in the scriptures 48. Such a situation has interesting implications, one of which may have been that there was, in certain monastic circles in the centuries after the council of Valabhī, a vagueness or uncertainty as to what constituted scriptural injunction, and that terms like āgama and vidhi may have come to signify for many monks not so much a body of texts and specific ordinances based on them as, more nebulously, the totality of current and traditional religious behaviour which was perceived as deriving from an amorphous source loosely defined as scripture. It is this vague view of scripture and its contents which has been repeatedly challenged throughout medieval and more recent Jain history by recourse to actual texts by figures such as the sūris of the Kharatara Gaccha, Lonkā, Banārsidās, Bhikhanji and Srimad Rājacandra, thus providing one of the most important dynamic elements in the history of the religion.
In concluding this brief account about where and how a Svetāmbara monk ought to live, it may perhaps be appropriate to recall the statement of the Digambara, Pūjyapāda (sixth cent. A.D.), to the effect that discussion of monastic dwelling in terms
47. For this whole question, see H. R. KAPADIA, The Canonical Literature of the Jainas, Surat, 1941.
48. Samācārisataka, Bombay, 1939, pp. 76-81.

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194 Paul Dundas of living either in village or forest is for those people who do not perceive the self. For those who have actually experienced the self, the only true dwelling place is that very self, solitary and still 49. 49. Samadhisataka 73. The sentiment is echoed at Isibhasiyaim 38.13 and by Silanka commenting on Acarangasutra 1.8.1.4. This paper is a brief account of a subject which, it is hoped, will be dealt with more fully in velopment of the Kharatara Gaccha. I would like to thank the British Academy for awarding me a Small Grant in the Humanities which made much of the research for this paper possible.