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The Jina Malli: Jainism and the Spirituality
of Women
Katherine Anne Harper Loyola Marymount University
This article is about women, specifically religious women of ancient India, the land of seekers, saints and renouncers. Throughout India's history, there were countless women who participated in spiritual disciplines even to the point of joining groups of renouncers who engaged in severe modes of conduct. Such women have remained countless because, for the most part, they were anonymous. To a certain degree, their anonymity may have been a matter of choice. Writing on the subject of women's spirituality in contemporary India, Linda Johnsen observes:
[M]ost of the women saints remain with their families, purifying themselves by serving others. Every morning before their family awakens, they sit before the altars in their homes, worshipping and praying. They don't care for name and fame. Even the people in the next village do not know who they are.
There is, however, a growing body of research on the subject of women's roles in the religions of India in the first millennium B.C.E. that makes clear female anonymity was the result of a gender bias that permeated Indian society at large. It
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