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Sugandha: Sweet Fragrance
proper to this world below, though terrible, is not an eternal one.12 However, popular belief attaches to it considerable importance and this belief is supported by the ascetics who play upon this fear in exhorting the śrāvakas and śrāvikās to adhere faithfully to the doctrine and the austere practices it enjoins. The śravaka, acting no doubt in good faith, succeeded in convincing the small girl who was already predisposed towards such a belief that vairagya represented the most perfect of all states of life. The seed was sown!
Here we must pause a few moments to consider the social conditions of that day in Rajasthana and in the country as a whole, conditions which were inherited from a long previous age and of which we have already spoken. Sādhvi Sajjana writes that the marriage of young girls at a tender age is to be explained by two factors: firstly, the influence exercised upon the minority Jaina community by texts of the Hindu Scriptures which were negative towards womankind 13 and, secondly, the custom prevalent among the kings and princes of that day of obtaining for their harem, often by force, a large number of young and older girls, a practice which was not confined only to Musulman princes. In the face of the allpowerfulness of the local sovereigns, one can well understand that parents were eager to give away their young daughters in marriage in order to protect them. This state of affairs was such in Rājasthāna that it was not uncommon for parents to promise a daughter in marriage from the moment she was born, sealing thus a firm alliance with an honourable family.14
1577
The father of Pannā found for her a bridegroom when she was twelve years old. When she discovered about the negotiations in progress for her marriage, she expressed firmly to her mother her desire to become a sadhvi and begged that she should not be bound by
12 Cf. TS III, 1-6.
13 Cf. P 88 ff.
14 Cf. Sajjana, 1960, p. 25.
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