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PART V
CHAPTER 1
SOCIAL IMPACTS OF JAINA MONACHISM
After having surveyed both the literary and the epigraphical material for the history of Jaina monachism, it would be better for us now to notice briefly the impacts given to the society by Jaina monachism and vice versa.
We have already seen that Jaina monachism got itself organised and recognised in contrast to orthodox Brāhmanism. The Jaina monks, like other ascetic orders in India, were inspired by higher values, religious earnestness and social benefit. That is how there came to be built up an order of monks and a considerable organisation of the laity in different parts of India.
The ideas about the equality of birth and the denunciation of the Brāhmanical caste-system, however, seem to have melted away as the Jaina Church came in contact with different regions with the people of different cultures and castes.
The recruitment to the Jaina monk-order tended to be of a varied nature, and this gradually introduced a strong caste-system in the Jaina laity. In the early literary sources we find that even robbers, cāņdālas and other lowly people among with the Brahmins joined the Jaina monk-order. Coming to the Mathura period, we have people like dancers and others who formed some portion among the devotees of Jainism. In the medieval period it is found, especially in North Gujarat and Rajputana, that people from the third and the fourth categories (vaisyas and sudras) joined the Jaina Church. This tended to give a hybrid collection of followers, the result of which was that the caste-system appears, at present, in its morbid form and narrows the outlook of Jainism.
Coming to the monastic practices, we have already seen that under pressure from the society Jaina monachism had to effect changes in some of its practices. For instance, rules about washing of clothes, disposal of the dead in a proper way according to local customs, various superstitious practices regarding study and travel may be taken to have changed in different social environments. So also use of a peculiar clothing in hot or cold countries, a change in food (in some cases) in non-vegetarian countries, etc., show that Jaina monachism had to adjust some of its practices within a particular limit according to the social cultural and geographical conditions obtaining in different regions.
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