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The Followers of the Ever Growing One
253
for this reason, from the beginning, he divided the sādhvis into simghadas, small groups. Out of fifty-six sādhvis to whom he gavel dikşā he dismissed seventeen.
It was only under the third ācārya, Sri Rāyacandra, that the sādhvis had a Pramukhă at their head, under the direct authority of the ācārya: Sādhvi Sri Saradārā. She received dikşă in 1841 after she had given evidence of most admirable constancy. Married as a child, she lost her young husband five months after the wedding. Through her persistent effort to obtain from her deceased husband's family, who were totally opposed to the idea, permission to embrace vairāgya (renunciation), she already gave proof of her potentiality. As soon as she was made Pramukhā she organised with great competence the one-hundred and twenty one sādhvis into twenty-three simghadas. The chronicle narrates at great length her activities, her vihāras, cāturmāsyas and tapas. 343
From the list of cäturmäsyas of certain well-known sadhvis we come to the conclusion that their vihāras usually happened in Rājasthāna, though sometimes in Madhya Pradeśa also.
From the time of the third ācārya onwards, it is noticeable that there was an increasing tendency for members of the same family to follow the path of asceticism. Sadhvis had sometimes a son, a husband, a step-brother or a brother among the munis and munis a daughter, mother or sister among the sădhvis.
The chronological record from the first to the ninth ācārya reveals this interesting fact: during these two hundred and eighteen years, one thousand four hundred and thirty-nine sādhvis received dikşā and only sixty-four were dismissed from or left the gana; during the same period only seven hundred and nine munis received diksă and out of this number dismissals or voluntary departures numbered two hundred and thirty-one.
343 46 pp. of the chronicle are consecrated to her; MS. Part III, pp. 171-172.
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