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436
The Unknown Pilgrims
us here are the family and personal reasons which have prompted a girl or young woman or a woman of maturer age to embrace this state, despite the evident fact that in the village context family bonds are very close and there is little inclination for change and novelty.
It was customary in respectable families - and indeed this custom has not yet altogether disappeared to promise in marriage a young girl of less than marriageable age to a somewhat older boy of a family of the same caste.39 The two families used to put a seal on this bond by the exchange of gifts and even by a marriage-ceremony, the bridal pair being still children; after which, for the most part, they each lived in their own family until the girl reached puberty and the boy had started work. On account of the high level of mortality in the villages, mostly due to great epidemics of cholera or smallpox or to malaria, many young girls became widows before they had embarked on the conjugal state. In accordance with the contract drawn up with the family-in-law, the young girl had to go and live a dull and apparently useless and unproductive existences in the house of her parents-inlaw, where sometimes she simply fulfilled the role of a servant. This being the case, one can readily understand, particularly if she came
devout family, that the young widow often felt a lively urge towards vairāgya and considered the vairāgini state ideal, for it would give her the chance, within a close knit community life, to journey towards a sell-defined spiritual goal and to study. Such is the classic and quite usual case. In many cases the family by marriage objected, but had to give in face of the young widow's determination.
In the past another type of case was also current, that of a young widow with a small girl; the young woman would join a group of sādhvis and, not wishing to abandon her little girl, would take her along too. Thus the child grew up among the sądhvis, who thus became her new family, and often she stayed and received dikșă in her turn. In our own day also one meets a certain number of sādhvis who have followed in the footsteps of their young widowed mothers.
Certain widows, with the assistance of their families, reared their children and subsequently received diksā. Sometimes the mother and
39 The Jainas have their own caste-system.
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