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Sce. 3. SOME PROBLEMS IN THE T. S.
bringing in Bhadrabāhu I and Candragupta Maurya, the theme developed from the Sravanabe!gola inscription no. 1, for the sake of establishing the authority of their tradition. (Likewise the Digambaras' claim that the Kaşāyaprābhrta, T. s. etc., are derived from the Drộtivāda is obviously concocted in relation to Bhadrabābu I who alone is said to have memorized the Dust väda.)
If the migration of the Jaina ascetic communities had rot divided the robe wearers in the West and the naked ascetics in the South, the Third Valabbi Council must have escaped to be the cause of the schism. The great schism thus came into being because time bad played a fatal role for it by changing the map of the Jainas into the South and the West. Unaware of this fact, the Western groups of monks performed their duty of preserving the sacred knowledge by summoning the Convention according to the past rule. This invited an emotional issue of the Southern brethered. Their attempt of compiling their own canonical texts is quite legitimate inasmuch as the two Canonical Councils were accepted in the past century. Also the Kaşayaprabhyta, etc., which were obviously studied by and handed down to the groups of early karma specialists who happened to have migrated to the South, should have their places in the final list of the canon. Therefore the Southern monks' protest against the list of the canon made at Valabbi is not at all unreasonable. Unfortunately, between these two remote areas there seems to have existed no attempt to have a following-up joint meeting for reconciliation or adjustment of the Valabhi redaction before they decisively split into the two church organizations.
Since the mobility of the Jainas in the Gupta age was as such, the news that the Valabhi Council redacted the final list of the canon must have reached the South rather soon. However how soon the Southern monks responded to the Western monks by organizing an independent sect is difficult to know. No record exists that all the Southern monks met at one place together to discuss about this matter. Msgesavarman's copper-plate charter refers to the Svetapațas in c. 478 A. D. and at least one dhoti wearing Akota bronze of the late 5th century A. D. is available. It seems therefore that the atmosphere of general dissatisfaction with the Valabhi decision soon came to prevail among the naked monks who were spread in various parts of the South, wherein the robe wearing monks were just a minority. Grouping into the Sveta pațas and the Nirgranı has seems to have occurred under some beavy pressure of this awkward and obscure atmosphere, which was soon conveyed to the Western monks, who retorted the South by producing the dhoti clad Tirtharkara images.
Among the basic creeds of the D gamaras, the proviso of nakedness for liberation must have been therefore declared at once. Women's ineligibility for liberation is its logical consequence. However the claim of the refusal of a kevali's kavalahāra must have been gradually developed by the time of the Sarvärthasiddhi, because the Digambara recension of the T. S. which accepts the Svetāmbara reading
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