Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 783

304 : SHRI MAHAVIRA JAINA VIDYALAYA GOLDEN JUBILEE VOLUME
character, clement but potential, of Svetāmbara Jainism : it is also the secret of its survival and the honourable existence it found in Western India.
Before it could attain its full growth, the Svetāmbara Jainism had to overcome two obstacles, one purely internal, the other being the rivalry of the Digambara Church. By eighth century, as among Buddhists, some lapses in the institution of the clergymen of the Śvetāmbara Jainism had become a regular, hardened, almost integral feature of the Church. A monastic (Caityavāsi) order, which did not require the abbots to follow the severe ethical code (prescribed for the monks in scriptures) with any degree of strictness, had come into existence and had by then become very widespread in Western India. The laxities of the Caityavāsis were exposed and condemned by Haribhadrasuri in no (uncertain) terms. The bishops of such abbeychurches, very learned to be sure, exercised powerful influence both in the State and in the society. They were hostile to the ascetics of the Vanavāsi Gaccha-mendicants who practised rigorous austerities--and to the travelling monks of similar categories known as Vihāruka, Samvegi, Suvihita, and Samvijñavihāri who represented the ancient, original system of Svetambara Jainism. The Pancasar minister at Anhilapāțaka was the stronghold of Caityavāsis in Gujarat. Since the days of its first archbishop, Silagunasūri, the State decreed that no Jaina monks of the orders other than those approbated by the Caityavāsi authorities could stay in Anhilapāțaka. This ban was lifted in 1011 through the efforts of Jineśvarasüri, a head of the group of Suvihita order, who managed, for the purpose, the intervention of the Solanki monarch Durlabharāja. The gates of Gujarat were thus opened for the monks who followed the true Belief' or rather the
right Code of the “vetāmbaras. The die-hard elements of the Caityavāsī system must have offered persistent resistance, it seems, to the spread of the other aforementioned orders. We, for instance, hear of Kumāravihāra at Kancanagiri of Jābālipura referred to as “Vidhi Caitya' which, by inference, indicates the existence of Caityavāsi order with a firm footing as late as in 1166. A Caityavāsī abbot Padmaprabha was defeated, we gather from literary sources, by Jinapatisūri at a still later date, in 1182; from which point on, the abbey-churches eventually declined in strength.
Digambara Jainism, compared to its counterpart, the Svetāmbara one, did not prevail in Western India with the same intensity; though, it was known from the seventh century at the very least, in Saurashtra