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Some Jain Versions of the 'Act of Truth' Theme
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śramana milieu. Renate Söhnen-Thieme has argued that the act of truth (which she also calls "truth-spell") disappeared in the post-Vedic Brähmanas, where its function was replaced by an appeal to what had come to be percewed as the more efficacious powers of knowledge and asceticism, while it continued in narrative literature such as the Buddhist Jätakas (as well as, of course, the two great epics)4.
Unfortunately, although the Buddhist versions of the act of truth have often been referred to, little attention has been paid to the possibility of the occurrence of acts of truth in Jain literature. Bloomfield's description in his lengthy analysis of the late sixteenth century Bhāvadeva Sūri's Pārsvanāthacarita of such an act (in this case called satyaśrāvanā), in which a queen obtains passage across a river and back again by declarations of the truth of her husband's fidelity and an ascetic's sanctity, seems to have been the only Jain example noticed by earlier scholars working in this areas.
Certainly, the Jain scriptural canon, unlike its Buddhist equivalent, does not seem to have proved fertile ground for this narrative theme. The early Jain scriptural view of truth was that it was interlinked with restraint and nonviolence and without any obvious magical powers. However, this is not in itself reason to discount the possibility of Jain versions of the act of truth, even in the canon6. In a recent paper, Professor Colette Caillat has drawn attention to the fact that the well-known chapter 12 of the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra, in which the Jain monk Harikeśa, the true brahman, is supernaturally protected from physical violence at the hands of a group of sacrificing brahmans, evinces what "amounts to “an Act of Truth" " performed by the purohita's wife who bears formal witness to his genuine asceticism?. John Cort has also drawn attention to at least one other act of truth in Hemacandra's version of the life of Mahāvīra in his Trisastiśalākāpuruşacarita. These do suggest the possibility that there may be rather more examples, albeit in slightly altered shape, of Jain acts of truth than scholarship has yet allowed. Without in any way intending to be exhaustive, I draw attention here to a few of these, taken from medieval narrative literature, in the hope that they may be of some interest to the great scholar who is being honoured by this volume.
Of the examples I will describe, most are connected with marital fidelity. One example, however, refers to the truth of the Jain religion and
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