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THE PURE AND THE AUSPICIOUS IN THE JAINA
TRADITION*
Padmanabh S. Jaini
According to Louis Dumont's well-known Rşabhadatta. However, Indra, king of the gods, who thesis Concerning the India Caste structure, the Varna has come to pay his respects to the foetus, became system is based upon the fundamental opposition greatly agitated, and the following thoughts occurred between the respective purity and impurity of the to him: highest Brāhmaṇa caste and the lowest untochable,
It has never happened nor does it happen nor will and the relative purity of the two intermediate castes.
it happen that Arhats, Cakravartin...in the past, present or As valuable as this thesis is for understanding future should be born in low families, means families, traditional Indian Society, however, it is valid only degraded families, poor families, indigent families, beggar on the presumption that the Brāhmaṇs are indeed at families or Brähmana families. For indeed, Arhats, the apex of the social structure. His interpretation Cakravartins...in the past, present and future are born in would not apply to Indian social groups which uphold high families, noble families, royal families, warrior the major provisions of the Varna scheme, while families, families belonging to the race of Ikşväku or of rejecting the traditional hierarchy by degrading the Hari or in other such like families of pure descent on both Brähmana one step, and similarly upgrading the sides. Surely this is an extraordinary event in the world: Kşatriya, and thus placing the latter at the apex of the
In the evermoving and endless progressive and regressive
time cycles, it is possible that a prodigious exception might social system
occur and an Arhat, a Cakravartin....might enter the womb The disjunction between sacredness and of a woman from an undeserving clan owing to the potency temporal power is supposed to account for the of the karma pertaining to the formation of their bodies superiority of the Brāhmana and the subordination of and clans. But they have never been born from the womb the Ksatriya. While this interpretation is certainly
of such a woman; they are never thus born, nor will they orrect within the traditional Vedic Varna system,
ever be born. Hence it is the established custom that the
embryo of an arhat so conceived is taken from the womb when the Ksatriya is elevated to the highest position,
of a woman and is transferred to the womb of a noblythe Brāhmaṇa can no longer claim superiority on the
bred clan. I shold therefore have the embryo of the last basis of a purity which he is presumed to embody.
Tirthankara transferred from the womb of the Brāhmana The case of the Jainas, who claim to be not only non
woman Devānandā to that of Trišalā, a Ksatriya woman Vedic, but even anti-Vedic, in their cosmological
of the Kaśyapa gotra, belonging to the Nața clan, living view, is of special significance for the study of such in the Ksatriya sector (the queen of king Siddhartha) in social groups as the Sramanas.2
the town of Kundagrāma. To illustrate the radical reinterpretation of The Jainas believe that Indra ordered his dumont's thesis which is necessary when examining commander of the army, a demigod named such non-Vedic groups, the legend relating the Harinegamesi, to conduct the transfer. The scene of conception of Mahāvīra, the highest spiritual master the change of embryo (garbhāpaharaņa) is depicted of the Jainas, is particularly illuminating. We are told on the Jaina reliefs found at Mathura datable to the that the was originally conceived in the womb of first century B.C., and the event itself constitutes the Devänandă, a Brāhmana woman, the wife of a certain first of the Kalyānakas, or auspicious events, together
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