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598
The Unknown Pilgrims
Sadhvi Candrayaśā has suddenly emerged from obscurity, it is because her ardour for tapas carried her off suddenly, while she was still young. She has become well-known because of her mahāprasthāna which so stirred the hearts of the crowds in Madrās who accompanied her at the time of her last pilgrimage that after her death her radiance, her influence, became visible even tangible. The one who certainly never gave a pravacana to a congregation has preached silently to thousands of persons through the example of her short life, which was consumed in the fire of tapas and totally purified in an awakening of the self to the supreme Reality: the atman.
The stages of her life were as follows. Sādhvi Candrayaśā came originally from Cambay, the ancient Stambhatirtha in Gujarāta, wellknown for its numerous Jaina temples. Here the samgha is firmly established. Her elder sister was already a sadhvi. At the age of thirteen, she expressed her desire to join the group of the guruņi Sarvodaya, who accepted her as a vairāgini and kept her on probation for about two years. Immediately after her dikṣā, when she received the name of Candrayaśā, the splendour of the moon, she evinced an unusual degree of ardour for tapas: rigorous repeated fasts and different form of pratyākhyāna.48 These fasts were only one of the expression of her zcal for the ascetic life. Her svādhyāya consisted in the regular repetition of a considerable number of sūtras that she knew by heart, her dhyāna was reinforced by very frequent japa and by numerous hours of silence.49 Her fasts, we are told, in no way diminished her energy, she followed all the observances of her group without showing any fatigue and she was prompt to help and care for the other sādhvis. She spent successive căturmāsyas in several districts of Mumbai, in Mahārāstra and then in the town of Bijāpura in the northern part of Karnātaka. In 1968 the group proceeded in the direction of Madrās, a distance of about nine hundred kilometres. At the beginning of this căturmāsya in Madrās, Sadhvi Candrayaśā undertook a fast of thirty days and, as several of her companions were also fasting, a zeal for fasting spread among the śrāvakas and śrāvikās
48 After several years, she was advised to write a diary describing her spiritual pilgrimage.
49 Cf., Nair, 1969, pp. 5-6.
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