Book Title: Studies in Jainism
Author(s): Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
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STUDIES IN JAINISM large number of mendicants, heretics and religious speculators were traversing the country from one end to the other, and it was a time of very hard religious competition, and severe austerities and absolute renunciation were the only criterion of excellence. Mahavira advocated giving up of clothes for only the highest order known as Jinakalpi, but not for anybody or everybody of the order or for all ages. And it is only among the Digambars that the fashion of nudity has survived even to the present day, and as a matter of fact we actually find southern Digambar sâdhus practising this as an indispensable part of their conduct.
It has now been proved without a shadow of doubt that image worship is a very ancient institution, and the Jains also used to worship images. It was several centuries after Mahâvîra that his followers divided themselves into Śvetâmbars and Digambars. The ancient images of Tirthankaras consecrated before the division cannot properly be said to belong to any particular sect, rather they belong to the Jains as a whole, irrespective of any other question. We find a good number of sitting Jain images without any signs of nudity, which can be assigned almost with certainty to early times before the division. It was sometime after the nirvana of Mahâvîra that far reaching changes took place in the principles as propagated by Him and laid down by Jaina agamas.
The most important diversity in the principle which gradually developed and ultimately led to the schism is the assignment of a distinctly inferior status to woman by denying her the possibility of full spiritual emancipation. This little fact, hardly noticed, is of profound significance in fixing with a good deal of certainty a considerably later date for the origin of the Digambars. For such narrow dogmas had their birth in times when a strong reaction had already set in against the broad-minded democratic religions of Buddha and Mahâvîra sweeping before them the false and petty distinctions of caste and creed, and when people were reverting back to old standards of conservatism and bigotry.
It was lord Mahâvira who established the blessed order
