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The Social Atmosphere of Present Jainism
of the Jaina clergy and to the rise and zeal of the Vişnuitic Vallabhācārya sect that many members of the old Jaina Baniyā castes gave up their inherited religion and 'bound the Kanthi ( i.e., the necklace of Tulasi beads, symbolical of Vaişņavism )', or, in other words, became Vaisnavas in great numbers. Late Jaina Ācārya Buddhisāgara says in the introduction to his 'Jaina Dhātupratimā Lekha Sangraha', I, p. 18, that he heard a Vaiṣṇava Pandita boast in a public assembly in Surat that the Vallabhācārya sect had converted three hundred thousands of Jainas to Vaişnavism, and the author adds that this may very well be true.
Now the old Jaina castes, whose members had to live, from the very beginning, in the middle of a heterodox and, in their eyes, ritually impure and barbarous majority, very early developed, independently of one another, a number of strict regulations concerning messmateship and intermarriage. And when the main castes again split asunder, and various sub-castes sprang into life, such as the Śrī-śrīmāla, Vīsā-śrīmāla, Daśa-śrīmāla and Laduvaśrīmāla, or the Visã-osavāla, Daśa-osavāla, Pañca-osavāla, and Adhiā-osavāla, etc., castes, those restrictions and regulations multiplied in the same measure. These sub-castes, in their turn, became divided into as many different branches as there were places, chiefly in Gujarat, Kathiāvada and Māravāda, where colonies of Baniyās had settled later on, up to a certain date.
And these sub-sub-castes again kept each strictly to their own regulations of messmateship and intermarriage. In many cases, moreover, the caste did not form a uniform religious community, but was divided into different sects and sub-sects. Thus, a Jaina Baniyā caste may not only be divided into the two main confessions of Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras, but there may be again idolworshipping Svetāmbaras, non-idolatrous Sthānakavāsī Śvetāmbaras and followers of the still more rigorously Calvinistic Terāpanthi Svetāmbara sect, and there are, on the other hand, again Vișāpanthi Digambaras and Terāpanthi Digambaras, each group refusing (with
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