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582
The Unknown Pilgrims
in her life to what she taught through her words. It is not surprising that Sadhvi Punya attracted the crowds and inspired numerous vocations to the ascetic life, for many requested to follow her. Throughout this biography, dikşā succeeds dikşā. To give just two examples: the first concerns a household in which the husband and wife, who were already of a certain age with children well-established in life, agreed to separate, persuaded to this course by the words of Sādhvi Punya, cach took steps to receive dikşā.26 The second is the case of a gifted woman who had made a happy marriage; after encountering Sādhvi Punya, bcing unable to resist the attraction of vairāgya, she wrote to her husband, who was travelling on business, to obtain his permission to receive dikṣā. The husband, in consternation, tried in vain to dissuade her, but finally gave his consent on condition that she find for him a new bride, which she immediately did. Furthermore, when the husband re-married, his wife made a gift of her jewels to the bride and departed joyfully to receive dikṣā. She became Sādhvi Suvarna Śri, one of the luminaries of the gaccha and succeeded Sādhvi Punya as pravartini after this latter's Great Departure.27
Sādhvi Punya very soon grasped, in an age when girls had no chance to study and when the sādhvis had scarcely any possibility of going beyond a very elementary knowledge of the doctrine, the importance of serious, regular study. With the utmost tenacity she both studied herself and helped the sādhvis to educate themselves.
The periods of căturmäsya were devoted to study, with the limited means that were at their disposal in a society that was still very tightly closed. Grasping the necessity of knowing Prākrit and Sanskrit in order to be able to understand the Sūtras in their original texts, she studied the chief elements of these two languages and taught them to her disciples. 28 The impetus was given; thereafter, the Kharataragaccha sādhvis were fired with this same zeal for svādhyāya and adhyayana.
26 Ibid., pp. 121-124.
27 Ibid., pp. 138-143
28 Ibid., ch. 19.
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