Jain Journal 1982 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 37

OCTOBER, 1982
It was not uncommon to find nuns of high calibre and great learning among the Jainas. Guna Sadhvi, for instance, who prepared the first copy of that monumental allegorical work of Siddharsi, the Upamitabhava-prapanca-kathā, in A.D. 905, is addressed by Siddharsi himself as the goddess of learning incarnate. In A.D. 1118, in the age of Siddharaja Jayasimha, two nuns, Mahananda-sri Mahattara and Ganini Viramati actively helped Maladhari Hemacandra in the composition of a lengthy commentary on the Višeşāvašyaka-bhāşya of Jinabhadra. In 1350 A.D., Gunasamrddhi Mahattara composed a Prakrit work entitled the Añjanāsundari-caritra.
A woman especially aspires to achieve two things—unblemished love towards her husband and success as a mother of good children, The affection that a mother bears towards her son is best pictured in the story of King Solomon's justice. It is not an easy task for a mother to sacrifice her own son for an ideal, or willingly to allow him to turn away from home and become an ascetic. Meghakumara, the son of Dharini and King Srenika, desired to become a Jaina ascetic, and when in spite of great persuasion he refused to change his resolve, the parents took him to Mahavira, and the mother instructed her son to be true to the ideal of a monk and blessed him in his new walk of life. Greater still was the sacrifice of Pahini, but for whose voluntary sacrifice India would have missed the great scholiast and versatile writer Hemacandracarya, and the Jaina sect a great Acarya and propagator of the faith.
In the town of Dhandhuka, North Gujarat, there lived a wealthy Jaina merchant, Caciga, whose wife Pahini was especially pious and devoted to the practice of the Jaina religion. To them was born a son, Cangadeva in 1088 A.D. It is said that before the birth of the child, Pahini once dreamt that she had given a wish-giving gem (cintāmaņiratna) to her guru, Acarya Devacandra. This she narrated to him. When the boy was five years old, Pahini once went with him to Devacandra for paying her respects to the saint. The boy straightway occupied the seat of Devacandra himself, whereupon the monk could foresee what was to happen, and reminding Pahini of her dream, asked her to make a gift of her dear and only son Cangadeva to the Jaina church. Her husband was away, but after some hesitation she rose to the occasion and made the precious gift, fearing that if she awaited the arrival of her husband, he might not consent to it out of paternal attachment. It was a great ordeal for her, for in addition to her inner conflict, she had to tackle her husband, who became wild with rage and tried several means to regain the child, whom Devacandra had wisely removed to Cambay. Ultimately, Caciga also seems to have been persuaded to give his consent