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JAINA MONASTIC JURISPRUDENCE
27 deemed fit for ācāryahood as well (IV, 4336). The spardhakapati, as the designation stands, seems to have acted as the head of a phaddaä or a small sub-group in a gaccha (laghutaro gacchadeśa eva: Ova. p. 86). The Ovavāiyasutta tells us that this group was headed by a ganāvacchedaka. Does it mean, then, that the spardhakapati and the gaņāvacchedaka were identical?
The foregoing discussion proves that the officers of the church were persons of moral discipline and academic and practical scholarship. These qualities were essential for those who were the custodians of monastic discipline and its proper working among the subordinates. The Officers of the Nuns:
The organisation of the nuns was done under their own officers all of whom were subordinate to the officers of the monk order. The ācārya, the upādhyāya and the pravartinī were the protectors (aryikāpratijāgaraka) of the orders of nuns. This subordination was so supreme and final. that a monk even of three years' standing could become the upādhyāya of a nun of thirty years standing and a monk of five years' standing could become the upādhyāya of the nun with sixty years' standing, as laid down in Vavahārasutta (VII, 15, 16). This echoes faithfully the smashing rule of the Cullavagga of the Buddhists which lays down that a nun of even a hundred years' standing should bow down to a monk of recent entry to the order! The final blow comes from the Digambaras who hold that a woman, even when she becomes a nun, is not eligible for liberation unless reborn as a man. (Pravacanasāra, III, 7).
This avowed inferiority is reflected even in the administration and control of the order of nuns. For the rule held that the nuns were not to live at any time without the association of either an ācārya or an upadhyāya or a pravartini. The last of these stood at the lowest stage, subordinate both to the ācārya and the upādhyāya. (Vav. III, 12).
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