Jain Spirit 2002 06 No 11

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 55

EVE LIBERATION?
undertaking at least that modicum of practice, one could not hope to attain the most exalted of states, moksha or nirvana.
clothes in strict accordance with the prohibition against nudity, they were on equal footing with the monks and were granted the full status of mendicancy. More importantly, women were thus considered eligible to attain moksha in that very female body - a prospect possible to any nun who was sufficiently adept spiritually. Moksha was therefore based not on biological condition but on spiritual development alone.
The Shvetambaras, of course, conceded that Mahavir adopted the practice of nudity (acelaka), but they regarded the renunciation of clothes for monks as optional, somewhat similar to the practice of austerities such as fasting which was hardly mandatory though entirely commendable. However, the Shvetambara position became increasingly intransigent until the leaders of the sect came to claim that clothes were an integral part of the holy life and that they were the only true mendicants because they wore clothes. As the debate became more inflammatory, the Shvetambaras resorted to eschatological arguments to justify their claim: the practice of nudity, commendable during the time of Mahavir himself, was no longer advisable in this degenerate age. Their scriptures related that soon after Mahavir's death the practice of nudity became extinct. Its revival was deemed inappropriate during the subsequent period in a
It would be appropriate to ask if these debates have any relevance to those men and women who are actually engaged in practising the Jain mendicant discipline. The precise number of monks and nuns within the two Jain sects is not known. Modern attempts to estimate this have yielded a figure of some twenty-five hundred monks and as many as six thousand nuns. The percentage of Digambara mendicants is quite small: no more than a hundred naked monks (munis) and probably even fewer nuns (aryikas). The
fashion reminiscent of the kalivarjya practices - or those once legitimate but now condemned -- in the Hindu law books. The Shvetambaras therefore considered the Digambaras heretics for rejecting the authenticity of their canon (agama), especially for defying the canonical injunctions against nudity and for showing disrespect to the large mendicant order of the whiteclad Shvetambara monks who were following the prescribed practice of the sthavirakalpa - being clothed and being a member of the ecclesiastical community.
With the overriding importance for the Digambaras that was attached to nudity, it is no surprise that clothes came to occupy a central position in the debates on the possible salvation of women as well. For reasons that were never specifically stated, even the Digambaras did not grant women permission to practise nudity under any circumstances and insisted that women wear clothes. This injunction effectively barred women from ever renouncing all possessions and, accordingly, from attaining moksha in that life. Female mendicants, called noble or venerable ladies (aryikas or sadhvis), were technically not considered mendicants at all but simply celibate, albeit spiritually advanced laywomen (utkrstasravika) - a status similar to the one which the Digambaras were willing to accord to the Shvetambara monks. The Shvetambaras, on the other hand, did not consider clothes a possession but rather an indispensable component of religious life (dharma-upakarana). Therefore, even though nuns wore
Can Women Achieve Liberation?
"One of the major issues dividing the two sects was the acceptability of ordained persons wearing clothes."
remainder are all within the Shvetambara community. I conducted a casual inquiry a few years ago among small groups of these nuns in the areas of Kathiawad in Gujarat and the Marwad in Rajasthan. It revealed that the majority of them came from the affluent merchant castes, such as the Srimalis or the Oswals. Almost half of them were unmarried and had entered the mendicant life at a very young age (some even at the age of nine) and in many cases they were recruited into the order by a female member of their own family such as an aunt or sister who had been ordained earlier in a similar manner. In contrast, most Digambara nuns I met were widows before entering the order and with a few notable exceptions are less effective guides and teachers in their lay communities than their Shvetambara sisters. One cannot fail to conclude that the rejection of liberation of women might in some way have led to the lack of enthusiasm for asceticism among Digambara women, discouraging them from actively pursuing the vocation of nuns.
The above article is extracted from 'Gender and Salvation: Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women' by Padmanabh S. Jaini (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp1-30.) This book is regarded as one of the most important modern contributions to Jain knowledge and understanding.
June-August 2002 Jain Spirit 53 www.jainelibrary.org