Studies in Buddhist and Jaina Monachism

Author(s): Nand Kishor Prasad
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 104

PABBAIA AND UPASAMPADA
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the same procedure as in the case of the monks alluded to before. Later on the nuns themselves were allowed to confer pabbajja and upasampada on female candidates, but that too was to be approved by the Order of monks. The procedure adopted by both the Sanghas of monks and nuns to solemnise the conversion of a nun was, no doubt, the same as in the case of a monk. 2
Unlike the Buddhists, the beginning of the Jaina Order of nuns can be traced to a period as early as the first Tirtharikara, Rşabha. The Kalposūtra inforins us that the following of Rsabha comprised 300000 nuns with Brahmisundarī at their heads; that of Aristanemi, the twenty-second Tirthaikara included 40009 nuns under the leadership of Yaksinil; that of Parávanátha, the twenty-third Tirthaikara contained 38000 nuns with Puspaküla as their chief; and that of Mahavira, the last of the group comprised 36000 nuns with Candana as their head
This information, however, exaggerated it may be, throws a flood of light at least on the great antiquity of the Jaina Order of nuns. Besides, it also reveals that the Jaina Order of nuns has a distinct feature of its own from the very beginning of the Jaina faith. Yet one thing is remarkable. It is its silence on the point as to how women were allowed to embrace nun-life for the first time The curiousity for an episode parallel to that of the Buddhists is but natural as the Jaina trend of thought, like the Buddhists, was also divided on the issue whether women were worthy of nunhood or not.
Anyway, we come across at various places the descriptions of the renunciation of women which, with some negligible differences in point of their festive element, were not only almost similar in all cases but also corresponded to the practice which obtained with the monks. A brief account of the renunciation of Malli, the nineteenth Tirthaikara of the Svetambara sect will illustrate the case clearly.?
Having brought her six suitors to their senses, Malli, the princess of Mithila asked permission of her parents for renunciation. Her
1. CV, 10. 3. 3, pp 377-78. 2, Ibid, 10. 10-11, pp. 391-95. 3. Kapp (SBE. Vol. XXII), p. 281. 4. Ibid, p. 278. 5. Ibid, p. 274. 6. Ibid, p. 267. 7. For other instances Vide Nāyā, p. 153; Niryā, pp. 51-52; 65-66; Antg, p. 28.