Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 61

From the evidence of the Sutrakritanga and other Jaina scriptures, we learn that the followers of Parsvanatha lived in the area of Magadha, the same region as the parents of Mahavira, the twenty-fourth and final tirthankara. Mahavira's royal parents were counted among the followers of the religion propagated by Parsvanatha. 54 Like Shakyamuni, Mahavira was a ksatriya and son of a king. Born in the sixth century B.C.E., Mahavira's teachings stressed social reform by demolishing the barriers of caste, creed, tribe, and race; 55 and to Parshvanatha's Law of Four Restraints, he added a fifth stipulation for his renouncing followers celibacy 56 At the time of Mahavira's death, according to the Kalpasutra, his community of followers consisted of 14,000 monks, 36,000 nuns, 159,000 laymen, and 318,000 laywomen.57 Recorded also are the numbers of male and female followers to achieve salvation during Mahavira's lifetime. There were 1,400 women in contrast to 700 men.58 Here too, we are informed of disproportionate ratios in which women's numbers exceed those of the men by roughly two to one. That such ratios were recorded form both Parshvanatha's and Mahavira's sanghas is very significant. The ratios represent a time in history when the greater interest, dedication and aptitude of women for spiritual matters was recognized. It seems that Mahavira allowed women into the order from the beginning of his teaching with Arya Canadana, Mahavira's first woman disciple, subsequently becoming the head of his order of nuns.
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The large numbers and references to women remnants of an ascetic movement which, on the whole, defended egalitarian attitudes. In the years immediately following the time of Mahavira, women were permitted the freedom to exercise options which included entering the order and the promise of reaching the state of bliss. For a time they too were allowed to wander freely and teach in what was a relatively liberal society. Like their male counterparts, Jain women renunciants never established communities in fixed
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