Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

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

Page 62

locations, but followed the ideal of Mahavira to never live more than one day in the same village. 59 Eventually, however, nuns were made to become more dependent upon their male colleagues' authority. Regulations were devised that stipulated where the women were allowed to beg, and what implements they could own or use. Stricter regulation of their movements was justified by the wish to avoid all objects and conditions of life that could endanger the vow of chastity 60 In the early centuries of Mahavira's order, there was a liberal attitude regarding co-educational teaching. Situations in which women were the disciples of monks, and monks were the disciples of senior nuns have been recorded. 61
Unfortunately, the liberalism toward females that characterized the early centuries of Jainism was eventually influenced by the pan-Indian prejudices against women. The first literary references to the final occlusion of women from places of authority date to the middle of the second century C.E., but they are the product of a branch that had taken place around 300 B.C.E.62 The Digambara acharya Kundakunda, in his work Sutraprabhrita, openly declared women unfit for emancipation.63 Among other assertions, he stated that women have no purity of mind because their menstrual flow was an anxiety-provoking liability. He averred that total nudity was a requirement for liberation and, because women must wear clothing, they are exempt from attaining liberation. Such proclamations mark the culmination of a long period of struggle by those with reactionary attitudes who sought to limit the role of Jaina women, and discredit their spiritual aspirations or achievements. In doing so, Kundakunda and his circle succumbed to the social pressures outside the Jaina community,64 or in other words, these leaders of the Jaina community adopted the pan-Indian views denigrating women. Such attitudes between the Svetambaras and Digambaras have raised the debate on the issues of nudity. Important to women particularly, the matter of the nakedness of renouncers served
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