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very life.
JAINISM IN SOUTH INDIA
8) Strinam tad-bhavē mokshaḥ; women can attain liberation in this
It is needless to describe why and how these generous precepts followed by persuasive practices might have contributed to the great popularly and warm reception of the Jaina preceptors wherever they went. I may pointedly refer in this context to the reply given by the nun Kavunti to the Brahmana as an illustration of the proselytizing policy adopted by the Jaina teachers in the Tamil country in particular, as noticed in my review of the Silappadikaram in the 4th Section of the previous Chapter. The same sense of accommodation and capacity for adaptability must have been responsible for the popularisation of the Yakshi cult and also for the ceremonial and ritualistic innovations in respect of the worship of gods by the Jaina priests in South India.
POSITION OF WOMEN: By far the most outstanding factor, more than anything else, that might have contributed to the success of the Jaina faith in South India, appears to be the liberal attitude towards women evinced by the Yapaniyas. For, women are the most potent transmitters of the religious ideas and practices, particularly in India, and the teacher who is able to capture their religious propensities, rules the society. In spite of their rather not ungenerous attitude towards women, entertained by the teachers of the Brahmanical schools, and also of the Buddhist faith, I think, no emphatic assurance like striņām tad-bhavē mokshaḥ, was ever held forth by them. Consequently women must have been induced, in large numbers, to follow the faith that gave them this assurance and quenched their spiritual yearnings.
We meet with a large number of women as lay followers of the Jaina creed in the inscriptions of Karnataka and it is realised from their social status and religious activities that they played a distinguished rôle in the propagation of the faith.' Besides these, we come across a good many nuns also. They are referred to generally as Ajjis, Ajji being the tad-bhava of Sanskrit Āryā, and some times as Kantis. The Ajjis and Kantis seem to denote two different categories of nuns. The Ajjis, who are more numerous, represent, probably, that ordinary class of women who had renounced the world and taken to the life of asceticism. The Kantis appear to have been a special class of nuns who owned a higher status in the monastic organisation with which they were intimately associated by the rigid rules of the order.
1 See Mediaeval Jainism, Chapter V.
