Jinamanjari 2001 04 No 23

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

Page 79

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the followers of Kānjī Svāmī and their opponents, the majority, within the fold of the Terapanth Digambaras in Baraut and in North India in general. The chapter is based on a book written in Hindi by Neeraj Jain in 1988 (no precise reference is given) and on a general account of the Kanja Panth by Paul Dundas (1992) from which R. K. Jain reproduced whole sections verbatim without using quotation marks. It describes how in 1983 the Kundakunda-Kahnā Tirtha Rakṣā Trust was founded in order to promote the worship of Kanji Svāmī (who declared himself to be a Digambara Terapanthi) in his reincarnated form Tirthankara Suryakīrti. This was vigorously opposed in 1985 by the Mahāsabhā, whose patron saints were Muni Dharmasāgara and Āryikā Jñānamātā in Hastinapur, and by the Mahāsamiti, whose patron saint was Muni Vidyananda. However, the main representatives of the Mahasamiti, the Sahu Jain family (Times of India) and Premcand Jain (Jayna Watch Co.) in Delhi, had once supported Kānjī Svāmī and failed to join the united front against the Kanji Panth supporters at Songadh. At this point, the study abruptly comes to an end: "To sum up this section, we should note how the Digambar Jain wealthy elites all over India, but based particularly in Delhi and Bombay, participated in formenting the rift between pro- and anti-KSP factions. Although in the present state of our knowledge the fact could only be hinted at, there seem to be quite substantial material interests involved in the confrontation between the leaders of this fight. The supporters in this factional fight are mainly the pandits; each group of pandits stands to gain materially at the cost of the other. There are also, as we noticed in the earlier narrative, patron-saints in the form of one prominent muni blessing each faction" (117).
The book under review is certainly not the first "ethnographic" study of the "Northern India Digambara Jains", as claimed by the author (50), who may have been unaware of Mahias' (1985) and Shanta's (1985) work. Nor is it very original, as its lack of new empirical data, its over-reliance on secondary sources, and on interpretations imported particularly from Williams, Carrithers, Cort and Dundas testifies. However, somewhat surprisingly, this
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