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The Never-ending Pilgrimage
417
the most important group, there is so far very little inclination towards advanced study, although some sādhvis have understood the necessity of pursuing further study and instructing their disciples.
Furthermore, it has been established from fairly recent statistics that there are fewer and fewer young widows and more and more girls who request dikşă. In certain groupings a vairāgini is usually permitted dikṣā after a long period of probation of which a large portion if spent in study.
A śrāvaka who helped found the first Sthānakavāsi college for sådhvis told me that he was deeply desirous that the sădhvis should be enabled to organise themselves into a sort of federation with certain ones of their number at its head. This initiative, however, could only be authorised by agreement between all four branches of the samgha. For such a development it will be necessary to wait until the sādhvis of the various sampradāyas enjoy a certain autonomy within the samgha. For the moment courageous and intelligent guruņis are forging ahead, while still staying within the structures.
Will we ever see a sādhvi Upadhyāya or a sådhvi Ācārya? In the present situation such a thing would be unthikable and yet the Vyavahāra-sūtra indicates it as a possibility. However, it is laid down ; that a sådhvi can be elevated to the rank of Upadhyāya thirty years after her dikşă and a muni after three and that a sādhvi may be raised to the status of Ācārya sixty years after her dikṣā, a monk after five. 19 What proof of overbearing masculine superioity! However, even if this superiority continues and even if one cannot change the text of certain Ağamas, we may have recourse to the evidence: at the present time the number of sādhvis is more than twice that of munis and the number of well-educated sādhvis is growing fairly rapidly. One day it might well come about that sådhvis were the initiators of a spiritual renewal. This is exactly what Aryikā Jñanamati Mātāji has already brought about in a restricted group, where the monks pay her an even greater reverence in that she is self-educated, thanks to being endowed
who speak it fluently; 20 were satisfied with the prevailing state of affairs; 3 did not reply; cf. Bordiya, 1975, p.273.
19 Cf. VS VII, 19-20.
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