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HISTORY OF JAINA MONACHISM
507
presents a greater degree of a corporate and a reciprocal monastic life than that among the Jainas.
Nuns and Brahmanism:
Unlike the Buddhists and the Jainas, Brähmanism has the unique feature of having no nun-order as such. The 'brahmavädinis' of the Vedic period, Maitreyi, wife of Yajnavalkya of the Bṛhadaranyaka Upanisad, Gārgi of the Samhitä period, and such others fail to reveal the existence of an organised system of "nuns" in Brähmanism. These are rather stray instances of women taking part in composing hymns,277 and in debates on metaphysical
matters.
The Brahmanical texts do not lag behind in condemning the woman. The culmination is found in Manu who thinks woman to be a creature unfit for liberty. He prohibited Sūdras and women to study the Vedas.29 In some texts purification is prescribed for the "offence" of even touching at Women were not allowed to perform religious sacrifices also.280
Thus the attitude being stiff towards women, the institution of 'sannyasa' was also denied to them. Har Dutta SHARMA accounting for the absence of nun-order in Brahmanism says, "The real idea underlying Samnyasa or renunciation has been the renunciation of the household-fire. This householdfire is kindled by a man and so its renunciation is also possible only by a man. A woman does not at all come into the question".281
ALTEKAR, however, seems to attribute it to the rampant moral degradation of the Buddhist church. "Later Hinduism took a lesson from what it saw in Buddhist monasteries and nunneries and declared women to be ineligible for renunciation. It maintained that not renunciation but due discharge of family responsibilities was the most sacred duty of women. Nuns, therefore, have disappeared from Hinduism during the last fifteen hundred years."282
277. HANDIQUI, Women Poets of ṚgVeda, I.A. Vol. 50, pp. 113ff. 278. Manusmrti, 9, 3.
279. Ibid., III, 156; IV, 99; IX, 18; X, 127.
280. Apastamba, 1. 5. 14 and 11. 6. 17.
281. Poona Orientalist, Vol. III, No. 4, Jan. 1939: ('History of Brahmanical Asceticism', chapt. VII, p. 63). In the next paragraph on the same page, however, he says that Janaka's mistaking Sulabha (Mbh. XII. 322), to be a brāhmaṇī in the sannyasa stage, goes to prove the existence of the brahmana female ascetics and kṣatriya female ascetics as well. Ibid., pp. 63-64.
282. Position of Women, p. 249; practically the same view expressed by L. RAO, I.A., Vol. 50, p. 84.
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