Jinamanjari 2001 04 No 23

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

Page 76

investigating social 'stratification' in favour of 'community and 'leadership' (32) and for constructing a artificial contradiction between the radical individualism of the monk (muni) in Digambara doctrine and the 'deviations' of observable practice. Using Bourdieu's Durkheimian criticism of Weber's theory of charisma, which Carrithers had adopted, R. K. Jain argues, somewhat unfairly, that Carrithers failed "to locate the Digamber muni as an agent in the religious field" (31) because he did not recognise his essentially 'totemic' or symbolic role for the constitution of social relations, nor the supplementary role of monastic institutions governed by bhattărakas for the munis: "The connection between monks and the laity hinge, to our way of thinking, crucially on the facts that in the present age according to Jain cosmography none may attain liberation and also that (as elaborated previously) there is, in the repetitive creation of the samavasarana, the Jain community, as an 'assembly of listeners' ever present in the Jain religious practice. These essential (and not historically contingent) compromises with the doctrinal individualism of the Digambar Jain muni elude Carrithers" (31).
Chapter four (The Shvetambar 'Church") summarizes some of the currently available informations on the correlation between the internal hierarchical structures of Svetāmbara orders (gaccha) and castes (jāti), and on the prominent role of Svetāmbara monks in the creation of castes and communities (citing the work of Folkert, Cort, Banks, Reynell, Babb, Humphrey, Laidlaw, and Dundas). The author adopts. John Cort's (1991: 663] observation that "the principal hierarchical differentiation among Digambars occurs before full initiation as a muni, in the levels of advanced householdership of brahmacari, ksullak, and ailak, while the mendicants consist mainly of the single level of munis, with hierarchy determined by seniority of initiation. The Shvetambars, on the other hand, exhibit a uniformity among the laity - they are all just shravaks (men) and shravikas (women) - but (as we have seen) a graduated hierarchy of initiatory ranks among the mendicants" (p. 38, reproduced from Cort without quotation marks). After the
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