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śramaņa, Vol 59, No. 2/April-June 2008
Ravişeņa has, like Yāpanīyas, taken the nuns as equivalent to the monks and not unfit for taking the five great monastic vows. Again, wherever he has mentioned the monastic ordination of any man or woman, he has clearly mentioned his or her attainment of heaven or liberation. In available edition of Padmacarita, he has mentioned the monastic ordination of Kaikeyi along with 300 other women and concluded the sarga (section) by saying. "samyaktvam dhārayanti sunirmalam." Here, the verb 'dhārayanti' has been used in the plural form, which indicates that he has referred to all 300 women and not only Kaikeyī. The 86th parva of this work neither mentions Kaikeyi's going to heaven nor does it say anything about her attaining liberation. He also does not mention as to what happened to her after death, while in Bharata's case he mentions his nirvāṇa along with his monastic ordination.
Similarly, the accounts of Sītā's monastic ordination include her description of going to heaven. Under such circumstances, why has Ravişeņa not mentioned anything about Kaikeyi's destiny after her death? What implies the silence of Ravişena here? If, according to Dr. Nagarajaiah Ravişeņa was a Neo-Digambara and did not believe in attainment of liberation of women, he could have at least mentioned her going to the heaven. Here, it appears that in order to support the Digambara view of non-liberation of women, the successive copyists or editors had removed the portions related to her liberation and added; "samyaktvar dhārayanti sunirmalam" or they had completely removed a verse mentioning the liberation of Kaikeyi. The scholars with sectarian zeal are responsible for such type of act. It is a wellknown fact that the term 'sañjada'was removed from the 93' aphorism of the first part of Şatkhandāgama, because it was in very much tune with the woman-liberation. This question had caused quite an argument even amongst a number of Digambara scholars. The very term is still absent in the first published edition of the Dhavalā, commentary on Satkhandāgama and the copper plates thereof. This
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