Jinamanjari 2001 04 No 23

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

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demise of the bhaṭṭārakas, the author concludes, with Cort, that routinization of charisma took place largely among the Digambar laity, but not amongst the monks (39).
Chapter five ("The Digambara Case reconsidered: Contemporary Period') is by far the longest, and least organised, chapter of the book (32 pages). It consists of a summary and interpretation of the 700 page Hindi autobiography of the lay-ascetic (brahmacari/brahmacāriņī) and later novice (kṣullaka) G. P. Varni (born 1877) from Bundelkhand which was first published in 1949 and partially serialised in the journal The Voice of Ahinsa (which the author does not mention). The chapter focuses on the "close tie-up between religious ideology and practice and the formal social organization" (59). This point is illustrated with reference to the competitive role of the lay renouncer, the "tyagi-cum-social activist" (57) for the creation of community and social mediation between castes. The author again stresses that the continuum between householder and monk amongst the Digambaras cannot be found in Śvetambara traditions, and quotes the following typology of G. P. Varni in support. Varni distinguishes between the common people (samanya janata), the wealthy (dhanik varga), the knowledgeable (pandit and tyāgi), and the 'priests' (bhaṭṭāraka) (68). R. K. Jain interprets the distinction between pandits and tyāgis as one between a 'proletaroid local intellectual' who follows the jñāna mārga and "conceives of the world as a problem of meaning" (81) and regionally respected religious agents which are "intermediate between the systematising intellectual and the clergy" (80) and whose austerities "provide actual models for the laity" (81). In contrast to the pandits and tyāgis, who are influential on the level of "routinized participation in organizations of local or regional scope", the munis, he argues, act as the living equivalents of the prophets or Tirthankaras and rise to the national level to communicate with 'super patrons' (67) such as Hukumcand or Sahu Prasad Jain. R. K. Jain argues that because of their intermediate position within the religious field, the pandits and tyāgis become pillars of the local and regional status quo and represent a uniformity of lay doctrine and practice
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