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The Unknown Pilgrims
took place a few years before her Great Departure, that her words were most fruitful. She knew just how to convince, to touch hearts, transform lives, inflame youthful hearts with zeal for vairagya, with all the resultant family struggles! She was also well able, in this region where the different religious sects have always found a fertile soil, to reply to questions, discuss, explain the Jaina position. At her sessions one could hear veritable dharmopadeśas, discourses on the dharma, in a company which included knowledgeable members of other Jaina communities, the Aryasamāja, the school of Vedanta, Sikhism and Islam. They say that sometimes the members of other traditions present at her pravacanas exceeded in number the Jainas. She had also a great concern for social questions and endeavoured to play her part in raising the status of women in the society of her day. 74
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For the last days of Mahāsati Canda, her sadhvi biographer, with deep filial love and profound grief, takes the reader in imagination to the upāśraya at Ludhiyānā where, still fully lucid in mind, this remarkable guruņi and valiant daughter of Rājapūtana, long since become a disciple of Mahavira, is preparing herself for mahāprasthāna after sixty-nine years of vairagya, years that were oftentimes very hard and sometimes heroic, years during which she brought light into the world by her presence, a gently, radiant light, that of Canda, the Moon!75
Mahāsati Śri Mohanadevi 76
74 The pravacanas constitute a lengthy, separate section of the book. They were collected and edited by 2 śravakas. A 3rd section, śraddhāñjali, is made up of 38 eulogies in poetry and prose composed in honour of Mahāsati by various authors: 12 munis, 4 sadhvis, 4 śrāvikās and 18 śrāvakas.
75 There are several different but similar words for the moon: cânda, candra, candramă, and also: śaśi, śaśi.
76 This sub-section relies on the admirable bigraphy written by her disciple, Mahāsati Śri Hukamadevi, in a spirit of great devotion to the one who had been to her both guruni and veritable mother; cf. several refs. to this biography in the other sections. Mahāsati Hukamadevi sent to me excellent replies to a questionaire addressed to sadhvis. I was expecting to meet her in
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