Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

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

Page 66

religious authority of women was unquestionable. The previous life-story of Malli as a dubious male ascetic was appended later in order to diffuse the impact of her spiritual success. The subtexts of the stories of Malli and the debates on women are clear. They are disguised attempts to destroy an older belief system focusing on the Great Goddess in which the female ability to create life within her body was sacred and the source of profound mystical power.
Conclusion
Many reasons have been proposed for the usurpation of women's rights and authority in Indian society and religion.75 A review of them all is beyond the scope of the present study. Here we are concerned with renouncing as it relates to female fertility. Perhaps the outgrowth of a mysticism already known in the pre-Vedic period, the tradition of renouncing family and worldly ties seems to have been the direct result of a need to sustain a trance-like state for indefinite periods of time. As the fashion to renounce became more popular in the late Vedic period. women's religious authority diminished despite the fact that women participated equally (or doubly so in the case of the Jains) in the renouncing traditions. Undoubtedly, one reason for the paradox is that renouncing and fertility cults are ontological opposites.
Renouncing was the process of closing out and closing down; a process of decreasing. The very nature of renouncing laid stress upon the avoidance of family ties, emotional bonds and sexuality, or indeed any pleasures of the senses -- all of which were associated with women.76 The old fertility religion of the goddess centred on reproduction and the "larger realm of increase."77 Again, both were associated with women. Thus, we can see how such ontological opposites would have resulted in dynamic tensions between the human needs for separation and joining. The disparate ontologies could not be resolved
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