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palm-fruits to maintain themselves, 5 Dakkhiņāvaha (Dakşiņāpatha) was a region where the Jaina monks were warmly welcomed and were offered sumptuous alms. Another account gives the story of Arya Kālaka who went to Suvannabhūmi (Burma) to see his disciples there.?
The traditional account of the spread of Jaina monachism to different parts of India, however, attributes this spread to the religious zeal of king Sampaï (Samprati), the grandson of Asoka, who, having conquered Ujjain and the Deccan, opened up new venues for the Jaina monks in Mahārāştra, Saurāştra, Andhra and Kudukka (Coorg).8 This spread may be said to have led to "a definite feeling in the Jaina Church in the early centuries of the Christian era to know thoroughly the parts of the countries which were under the sphere of the Jain influence. This growth of geographical knowledge may be further seen in the Cūrņis and even the sīkās where an effort to record truly and scientifically the ethnological and geographical facts is observed”.9
Against this wider background an attempt to study the Jaina Church may now be undertaken.
Persons Eligible for Church-life:
In all, forty-eight persons (eighteen among men, twenty among females and ten among the eunuchs) were debarred entry to monastic life.10 The list did not differ from that found in the Canonical texts. Not only that but even later texts like the Ācāradinakara attributed to Vardhamānasūri (c. 11th cent. A.D.) 11 give but the same list.12
Inspite of these rules, the post-canonical texts reveal a number of cases in which exceptions rather than the rule itself, were followed. In this connection a very interesting episode of a child is to be found in the Avaśyakacūrni.13 There it is told that a child of six months was taken by the fathermonk for ordination. The mother complained to the king about this. The king was baffled and asked the mother to see whether the child would go to her. The mother called out the child but it refused to go. The father
5. Bph. kalp. bha., Vol. II, 1060f. 6. Nis-C. 15, p. 996. 7. Avaśyaka-C. II, p. 25. 8. Bệh. kalp. bha. vr. Vol. III, 3276f. 9. JAIN, J. C., Life in Ancient India, p. 246. 10. Brh. kalp. bha., Vol. IV, 4365-66. 11. See WINTERNITZ, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 587, fn, 6. 12. See GLASENAPP, Der Jainismus, Guj. transl. pp. 344-5. 13. p. 391f.
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