Outlines of Jainism

Author(s): S Gopalan
Publisher: Wiley Eastern Private Limited New Delhi

Page 32

SVETAMBARAS AND DIGAMBARAS
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The Svetāmbara version identifies two factors which might have effected the division. The first was a 12-year famine that swept Magadha during Chandragupta's period (around 310 B.C.). To escape from the famine twelve thousand monks, under the leadership of Bhadrabāhu, went down to the south but were strictly adhering to the rule of nudity. During his absence, Sthūlabhadra officiated as the chief in the north and he relaxed the rule and he allowed the monks from both the sects to wear clothes. After Bhadrabāhu's return he became the leader again though he could not, any longer, insist on even some of the monks being clad in space. Bhadrabāhu was not very happy. Secondly, during Bhadrabāhu's absence from Magadha, Sthūlabhadra called a council at Pāțalīputra to collect and edit the sacred books. The council could produce only eleven Angas and the twelfth Anga, which contained the fourteen Pūrvas could not be produced. Since Sthūlabhadra knew the fourteen Purvas well he supplied them and the twelfth Anga was ‘recast.' Bharabāhu didn't like this development either; he was annoyed at the council having met during his absence and refused to recognize the twelfth Anga as well as the other Angas recast by the council. The division became permanent only in 83 A.D. (142 A.D. according to another view). The Digambaras maintain that it was Bhadrabāhu, the eighth successor to Mahävīra who was responsible for the laxer principles and this was the Svetāmbara sect which came to be formed in 80 A.D. We find an interesting legend to pinpoint the occasion which necessitated the two-fold division : A monk named Sivabhūti had been given a beautiful blanket by the King in whose service he had been at the time of his initiation. His spiritual preceptor warned him that it was becoming a snare to him and advised him to give it away; this he refused to do, so his preceptor took the extreme step of tearing up the blanket in its owner's absence. Sivabhūti, when he discovered what had happened, was so angry that he declared that, if he could not have that one possession which he valued, he would keep nothing at all, but would wander in entire nakedness ... and then and there he started a new sect, that of the naked Digambaras.3
Related to the story narrated above is the attempt of Sivabhūti's sister wanting to join the Saṁgha and being denied admission,
3 See Encyclopaedia of Religion & Ethics, Vol. 12, p. 123