________________
510
S. B. DEO Unlike the Buddhist nuns under Thullānandā, who, under the influence of Devadatta, took pleasure in behaving against the normal rules and encouraging schism in the Church, we come across no instances of nuns starting new schisms in Jainism. No doubt, we find nuns joining either the Digambara or the Švetāmbara or the Sthānakavāsin order, but they fail to play the role of active supporters of the dissenters so as to create bad feeling and indiscipline in the Church.
It seems that though the nuns led a group-life, there were quarrels and bickerings among them. The ganini was expected to pacify them and if she herself took part in them, then she had to undergo major punishment. It is likely that the nuns as a whole had a less percentage of calm and contented women. This was probably due to the fact that many women entered the order out of disappointment and personal unhappiness in worldly life and perhaps retained their traits or habits even after becoming nuns. Widows entered the order in great numbers in later stages.
Some scholars lay much stress on the moral decay of Jaina and Buddhist nuns as an argument for the absence of the nun-order in Brāhmanism. And the Brāhmanical texts also picture the 'śramanī', the ‘nirgranthika', and the 'pariyrājikā' acting as go-betweens.286 Not only that, even the Jaina texts picture some female mendicants involved in love-affairs of young people. In the Nāyādhammakahāö287 we come across a certain lady Poțțilā asking information to Jaina nuns regarding some spells or magic by which to bring her husband under control. It is possible that certain nuns did such things. But on such stray instances and on the basis of Brāhmanical texts (which very often have looked upon the Jainas and Buddhists as Nāstikas, for even Pāņini records natural antipathy between śramaņas and Brāhmaṇas), it would not be justifiable to draw a general and sweeping conclusion about the wholesale corruption of the non-Brāhmanical Church as a whole, and to attribute that as being the cause for the prohibition of sannyāsa to women in Brāhmanism.288 As against such cases, we may quote the instances of Rājīmatī, the wife of Ariştanemi, admonishing her husband's brother, who, seeing her naked in a cave, became enamoured of her.289
The services done by nuns from the point of view of the work of preachers cannot be minimised. They toured from place to place and gave to the public an essence of spirituality blended with the practice of simple
286. See, BLOOMFIELD-"On False Ascetics and Nuns in Hindu Fiction": JAOS, Vol. 44, pp. 204ff.
287. Chapt. XIV, p. 152, (N. V. VAIDYA's edition). 288. See ALTEKAR, op. cit., p. 38. 289. Uttar., XXII, 34-36.
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