Padmanabh Jaini at Symposium 2013

Author(s): Padmanabh S Jaini
Publisher: Padmanabh S Jaini

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COLLECTED PAPERS ON JAINA STUDIES
JAINA MONKS FROM MATHURA
303
calamity, i.e., an exception to the mendicant laws regularly observed. The story assumes that all Jaina monks were Digambaras to start with, who-as is the practice even to this day-adhered to the twin vows of nudity (någnya) and of eating food from joined palms (pani-tala-bhojana) once a day during the daytime only. The Digambaras have traditionally held a belief-partly supported by the sixth-century inscriptions of Shravanabelgola"that a migration of monks to the South took place under the leadership of Bhadrabahu, a contemporary of the Mauryan emperor Candragupta, during a 12-year period of drought in Magadha. They also have claimed that those monks who did not migrate and chose to stay in Magadha relaxed the rules of mendicancy, began to wear clothes, and started to use wooden bowls for collecting alms. For the Digambaras, these are the apostate monks (Jainabhāsa) who came to be labelled at a later time as Svetämbaras or 'white clad' monks.
expiations under unfavourable political conditions. In late medieval times the Digambara monks could not move about freely in certain areas of northern India where public nudity was frowned upon by Muslim rulers. The Digambara cleric (bhaftáraka) Srutasagara (c. sixteenth century) reports an incident where a Digambara monk Vasantakirti (of unknown date) living in Mandapadurga (Rajasthan?) allowed his monks an exceptional garb (apavāda-veša), namely, to cover themselves with a mat (tatti) or a piece of cloth (sādara or cădara) while on their outings for mcals and so forth. While he admits that this was an exceptional practice, Srutasagara nevertheless has no hesitation in condemning it as heretical." In view of such a tradition of uncompromising attitude on the part of the Digambaras, it would not be incorrect to surmise that the ardhaphālaka monks of the Kusana period, after a brief spell of public adoration-as demonstrated by the Mathura images for their heroic efforts to survive the drought, might have returned to the original fold soon after the crisis had ended. This could be one explanation for the total absence of the depiction of the ardhaphalaka images in the Jaina tradition in subsequent periods.
However, a direct connexion (assumed by the Digambaras) between a shortage of food and the wearing of clothes by hitherto naked monks remained unexplained, rendering this traditional Digambara account (of the origin of clothed' Jaina monks) unsatisfactory to any neutral observer. The Bhadrabahu kathanaka seems to provide the missing link in the story of the naked monk on his nocturnal begging rounds frightening a pregnant woman resulting in a miscarriage. This led to the lay people's request that the monks should henceforth visit the households covering themselves with half-a-piece of cloth held on their left arm. The correspondence between these words and the way in which the Mathura monks are shown covering their nudity with a short piece of cloth held on their left forearm-is truly remarkable and may not be purely accidental. Since such depiction appears nowhere else in Jaina art before or after the Kuşana era, the sculptures described above may be recalling a period of crisis through which the community of the Digambara monks had passed in not too remote a past.
Furthermore, the meaning of the term yapaniya itself lends credence to this particular account of the origin of this sect, which is, in fact, shrouded in mystery. It is referred to by that name (Yapanilülya) in the Sanskrit inscriptions of the fifthcentury Kadamba king Mrgeśavarma." The eighth-century Svetämbara author Haribhadra quotes a long Prakrit passage from a text of that sect which he calls the Yapaniya-tantra. In the Kannada Vaddärädhane it appear as jāpuli. Upadhye, who made an extensive study of the inscriptions of the sect (originating for the most part in the districts of Belgaum, Dharwar, and Gulburga of Karnataka), found the name Yapaniya appearing under various spellings, e.g. Japaniya, Yāpulīya, Javaliya, Jävaligeya, and so forth. This led him to believe that the term yapaniya could be an incorrect Sanskritization of the canonical Prakrit javansije (yamaniya, as in imdiyajavanije, i.e., those who control their senses).26
Our assumption that the Mathura depiction of the ardhaphalaka attire was in response to an exceptional situation may not be altogether fanciful. There is at least one recorded instance of the Digambaras making a similar concession (subject of course to
Upadhye's search for a Prakrit origin of the name Yapaniya-- justified no doubt by the inscriptional evidence-must be considered unfortunate. It has the effect of ignoring the true