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The Followers of the Ever Growing One
255
Departure in 1916.346 At her birth the Terapanthi sādhvis were already well-organised in another part of Rājasthāna with their first Pramukha at their head. Sadhvi Punya came from a village in the district of Jesalamera, right out in desert country, where the Kharataragacchas had for several centuries a centre of fervent religious and literary activity with accompanying temples and bhandāras.
The samādhi-mandira of Sadhvi Suvarna Sri
Sādhvi Suvarna also belonged to a family of Rājasthāna, but one that was settled in Ahmadnagara in Mahārāştra. As a young married woman she met Sādhvi Punya and, with great determination, asked permission of her husband and his family to receive dikṣā, which took place in 1890. Endowed by nature with a profoundly religious temperament and with high intelligence, she continued the task begun by Sādhvi Punya and took her place as pravartini. She imparted to the gaccha a new orientation which is still perceptible in her spiritual descendants, the sãdhvis of today.347 Her samādhi-mandira is at Bikānera, desert-city.
The guru-mandira of Sadhvi Sunanda Sri
Sādhvi Sunandā was a native of Gujarăta and came from a Tapāgaccha family. As a young widow she received dikşā along with her small daughter, who became Sadhvi Nirmalā Sri. An unpretentious guruņi, with unswering fidelity to her ideals, Sadhvi Sunandă left this world at the foot of Holy Mount Abū in 1968. As Sadhvi Nirmală is very well-known in Rajasthāna on account of the camps for both younger and teenage girls that she organises annually, the Srävakas and śrāvikās, desirous of expressing to her their gratitude, have had erected at Abū Road a guru-mandira in honour of Sadhvi
346 Cf. P 575 ff.
347 She was also the kinswoman of Sadhvi Vicakṣaṇa Śri; cf. P 584 ff.
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