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Jain Monastic Life
A Quantitative Study of the Terapanth Svetambara Mendicant Order'
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Peter FLÜGEL
One of the most neglected areas of research in Asian religions is the sociology of monastic orders. This is surprising, given the pivotal importance of organised asceticism for contemporary Jain, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Jain mendicant orders are the oldest surviving monastic traditions of the world. Today, they broadly refer to themselves as śramana sanghas, or ascetic communities. While information on the history and organisation of these itinerant groups is increasingly accessible, few studies inform us on their social and geographical dynamics. To remedy this situation regarding one centrally organised and tightly regulated Jain mendicant order in India, a combined socio-demographic and network-analytical survey was conducted by the present writer in 2001-2003 in Rajasthan, with the blessings of the late Acārya Mahāprajña (1921-2010), head of the Svetambara Terapanth mendicant order. The aim was to supplement previously collected qualitative data on the history, rules and regulations, monastic division of labour and religious life of the Terapanth, and on general demographic trends in contemporary Jaina monasticism.
The principal unit of investigation was the monastic order itself, which was treated as social system differentiating itself from the social environment through rules of membership, role-definitions, and emergent actions. The analysis of living social systems is predicated on third order observation, or observation of self-observation. While the Terapanth order describes its own functioning in normative terms, resembling the model of rule-implementation of classical organisational sociology with a focus on values, norms, rules, commitment, hierarchy, lines of command, compliance, etc., the project aimed at an understanding of the social dynamics within a Jain monastic community which presents itself as a limiting case of perfect social selfregulation. Not the formal structure and the practice of rule-implication, but the conditions, functions and consequences of the process self-organisation were the main concern of the project.
The principal aim of this pilot study was to generate a clearer idea of the network structure of actual contacts within the mendicant order, ideally in form of a
'First published in CoJS Newsletter, March 2009, Issue 4, pp. 24-29. - The project was funded by the British Academy Small Research Grant SG-32893. For a detailed account see Flügel 2009.
