Sambodhi

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 52

50
Padmanabh S. Jaini
the first to allow women not only to renounce the world but even to organize themselves into an order of nuns. A Hindu widow was never allowed this freedom. She may shave her head, forsake her ornaments, and undertake long fasts, but she must remain in the household, under the protection of her son and subject to the supervision of her elders.
Jaina texts have claimed that there were fourteen thousand male mendicants and thirty-six thousand nuns in the order of Mahāvīra.24 It is well known that the Buddha himself, however reluctantly, agreed to establish .& community of nuns, which flourished for a number of centuries and drew a large number of women, some even from royal households, Samghamitrā, the daughter of Emperor Asoka. The Buddhists allowed women the fruits of salvation but denied them Buddhahood. In this respect all Buddhists, including Mahāyānists, resemble the Digambra Jainas, that sect which denies the state of omniscience to a soul in a female incarnation, on the grounds that ascetic nudity, the prerequisite for salvation, is not possible for her.25
The Svetāmberas have rejected this doctrine and have maintained that a woman is in no way disadvantaged by her sex, nor is she less able to uphold the discipline of the mendicant. They have even claimed that Malli, one of the twenty-four Tīrthankaras and the predecessor of Mahāvira in our kalpa, was a female who renounced the world to become the supreme teacher.26 Throughout the centuries they have continued to propagate the law among women, and to this day they include more female mendicants than male in their community; even now, in a community of fewer than two million, the Svetāmbara samgha consists of about two thousand male mendicants and almost twice that number of females. These are women who have renounced the world completely, as in the time of Mahā vira; living in small groups, they move about the country on foot, and their only personal property is their clothes and their begging bowls.
A study of such a community, drawn mostly from the rather well-todo segment of society, would be of immense interest to those who whish to examine the position of man and woman in Indian society in general and to investigate the śramaņas' impact upon the society at large. A study of these individuals will tell us not only about their own outlook on man and woman, but also how the entire community, based upon the śramana ideals of salvation and renunciation, differs from the rest of Hindu society, which has been brought up on a doctrine of theistic grace and the path of devotion.