Book Title: ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 01
Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies
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On the one hand is samatva, the principle of equality, and on the other, hierarchies are put into place.
The great gender debate Padmanabh Jaini's research into the Jain debates on liberation for women stands testimony to the fact that women were thought to be inferior to men within the Jain faith even as early as the second century AD. Jaini traces the debate back to the Umāsvāti's Tattvārthasūtra in which, in a sūtra describing the siddha), the word linga (a word that is used to connote both gender and psychological sexual inclination) is used in conjunction with not only men (pulinga), but also women (strīlinga) and hermaphrodites (napunşaklinga). The interpretation given to it by the Digambaras is that Umāsvāti referred not to physical (biological) gender but to the sexuality of human beings (which the Jains assert as being of three broad types, and which is recognized as independent of biological gender), while the Svetāmbaras make the case that Umāsvāti or Umāsvāmi as they call him, was in fact referring to physical gender: and this is the basis of the whole argument against strīmokşa. The Svetāmbara argument is that women can achieve moksa on account of their ability to practice the ratnatraya of right view, right knowledge and right conduct, to which the Digambaras argue that:
"...women cannot attain moksa because they are inherently inferior to men... [because of] (1) the inability of women to be reborn in the seventh and lowest hell, unlike men; (2) their inability to renounce all possessions, including clothes; (3) their inferiority in such skills as debating; (4) their inferior position in both general society and the ecclesiastical order."
In fact, Ācārya Kundakunda even says:
The genital organs of the woman, her nav[e]l, armpits and the area between her breasts, are said [in the scriptures] to be breeding grounds for subtle forms of life. How can there be [full] renunciation for a woman?
Their minds are not pure and by nature they are not firm in mind or in body. They have monthly menstruation. Therefore, for women there is no meditation free from fear.5
2 Padmanabh S. Jaini's Gender and Salvation: Jaina Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women offers a selection of texts across the centuries. 3 Tattvārthasūtra X.4 * Gender and Salvation, p. 170 Ibid, p. 166
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