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The Unknown Pilgrims
successful demonstrations of magic and occult powers and, although the Niśītha-cūrņi condemns these activities, certain monks made every endeavour to practise them.171 All this gives us a general picture of the society of this early Middle Ages period, one which was vigorously alive and colourful, and in whici many differing values
xistent and intertwined. It was this same society from which the sādhvis emerged and with which, though they had renounced it, they remained in contact.
What do we learn from the Niśitha-cūmi about the sādhvis of that
day?
The main body of the rules of the Niśitha-sútra, apart from a few exceptions, being common to both nirgranthas and nirgranthis, the text of the Sūtra, like that of the cūrni, is addresed in general to the nirgranthas, it being understood that nirgranthis are also concerned although, we must repeat, these latter did not have direct access to these texts and were only familiar, through the good offices of the \ācārya or another monk, with a very small portion of them.
In accordance with a custom which still holds sway in our own day in cert'in regions, a widow, even though still an adolescent, was not permitted to re-marry. A great number of them, instead of vegetating in a sad and futile condition in the house of their parents or parents-inlaw, preferred to adopt the ascetic life, which allowed them to pursue an ideal and to study. 172 The attitude of the Jainas of that day towards womankind followed for the most part that of the ācāryas and munis who directed the samgha, it differed little from that expressed in certain Agamas and, apart from a few shades of differences as regards doctrine, was almost the same as that of men ascetics of other religious traditions of the same epoch, namely, that woman is for the ascetic the source of all ills; he must therefore shun her - which clearly betrays the weak character of these same ascetics. We must note, however, the benevolent and understanding character of the author of the cūrņi, who stipulates that on no pretext should a sādhvi be
171 Ibid., ch. VIII; cf. US XX, 45, where such practices are expressly forbidden to munis.
172 Cf. Sen, 1975, p. 106.
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