Religious Quest of India

SR No.: 011031
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: J N Farquhar, Griswold
Publisher: J N Farquhar Griswold
Total Pages: 365
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 92

Nuns.
Laymen.
HISTORY OF THE
All the present Jaina monks are considered to be the spiritual descendants of Sudharma, for the other Ganadhara left no disciples.
Besides the fourteen thousand monks a great multitude of women followed Mahāvīra, and of these some thirty-six thousand, the Jaina say, actually left the world and became nuns. At their head (at least according to the Śvetāmbara) was Ċandana, a first cousin of Mahāvīra's, or as other accounts have it, his aunt.1
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In those troublous times acts of oppression and violence must have often occurred, and it was such an act that led to Candana's becoming a nun. Once, as a girl, the story runs, Ċandana was walking in an open garden, when a wicked man named Vidyadhara saw her and, fascinated by her beauty, carried her off, meaning to take her to his own home. On his way thither he began to realize how displeasing her presence in his house would be to his wife, so, without troubling to take her back to the garden where he had found her, he abandoned her in a forest. A hillman found her weeping there, took her to Kauśambi and sold her to a wealthy merchant named Vrişabhasena, who installed her in his house against his wife's will. The wife grew more and more jealous of her, for Candana's beauty increased every day, and ill-treated her in every possible way, clothing her in rags, feeding her on broken meats, and often beating her. Mahavira came and preached in Kausāmbi and poor Candana needed but little persuasion to convince her of how evil a place the world was; gladly renouncing it she joined his community and eventually became the head of the nuns.2
Mahavira's third order consisted of laymen; these
1 Candana was the daughter of Cetaka, king of Vaiśālī; and this Četaka was either the brother or the father of Trisalā, Mahavira's
mother.
2 The Sthānakavāsī legend differs a good deal. Ċandana according to this was captured in warfare and sold by a soldier into the house where she was ill-treated.