Book Title: Studies in Buddhist and Jaina Monachism
Author(s): Nand Kishor Prasad
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur
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PABBAJJA AND UPASAMPADA
101 the Church, both the Churches laid down certain criteria to test the fitness or otherwise of those wishing to join the Order. In this way they tried to keep the Church clear of worthless fellows. Before making any general observation, it would be better to have a comparative glimpse of the same.
Excluding the thirteen types of disqualifications which made a man or a woman unfit for Church life, the disqualifications to be asked of a woman at the time of her initiation were eleven types of female clisease." Besides these, there were several other disqualifications which di barred those desiring entry into the Buddhist Order. Similarly in addition to the eighteen types of male or female (namely, a fool, an old, a cunuch, an idiot, an impotent, an ailing person, a thief, king's enemy, a mad, a blind, a slave, a wicked person, a blockhead, a person in debt, a deformned person, a prisoner, a timid and a trainee with unhinged mind) who were disqualified for Jaina inonastic life, a pregnant woman (guviini), a woman having a small child (bālavac ha), ten types of eunuchs etc. had also to share the same fate.*
Both Buddhisin and Jainism, though with different motives, concurred that ailiny persons were unworthy of monastic life. The former considered them a disturbance to peaceful Church life, whereas the latter found then unable to conform to the rules of Church discipline Hence, persons inflicted with any one of the five incurable diseases, viz. leprosy (kuttha), boils (ganda), eczema (kiläsa), consumption (sosa) and fits (apımāra)' or with goitre (galagandi), or with elephantiasis (sipadi', or with a chronic disease (paparogi). were precluded froin the claim of entering into the Buddhist Order.
The Jaina Church had its counterpart in the regulations that a person suffering cither from any one of the sixteen types of chronic diseases (ruga), such as vevaggi (trernour or aque), pangu (lameness), vadabha (hump-back), nimmanimalasa, sakkarapameha (diabetes), bahira (deafness), andha (blindness), kurta (mutilation), gandi (goitre), koţikkhata (paralysed?) and sūi (suffering from colic ?)', or from any one
1. MV, 1. 68. 125, p. 97. 2. CV, 10. 10. 22, p. 391. 3. Comm. to Thān, p. 165a. 4. Nis B, 3737-3744. 5. MV, 1. 31, 88, p. 76; 1. 68. 125, p. 97: 6. Ibid, 1. 62. 119, pp. 94-95. 7. NisB, 3645-3646.
