Introduction

(i) The status of the acaya (the head of a Jaina monastic community) Kundakunda (also known by his monastic name Padmanandi, Kundakunda being the name of his place of birth in Andhrapradesh) in the Digambara hierarchy is very high, probably next only to that of the acarya Bhadrabahu I (c. 300 B.C. ). It was during the time of Bhadrabahu that the once united Jaina mendicant community of Mahavira (traditionally 599-527 B.C ), known in ancient times as Niganthas (Skt. Nirgrantha, lit. "bond-free"), split into two sects that later came to be designated as the Digambaras ("sky-clad," those who adopted nudity following the example of Mahavira) and the Svetambaras ("white-cloth-clad," those who wore white clothes claiming that the practice of nudity was not obligatory) and began to have separate scriptures and different mendicant rules for their respective groups. For the Svetambaras this lineage begins with acarya Sthulabhadra, a direct disciple of Bhadrabahu. Sthulabhadra not only inherited a large group of mendicants under his rule but also received a considerable portion of the scripture (agama ) consisting of the twelve Angas that contained the words of Mahavira and his immediate disciples, the ganadharas . This scripture was preserved orally in his tradition for several centuries until it was finally revised and committed to writing nine hundred and eighty years after the death of Mahavira (i.e., in A.D. 453), under the supervision of the acarya Devarddhi Ksamasramana at Valabhi in modern Gujarat. The Digambara account of the post-Bhadrabahu events, however, is not quite so clear. Their

lineage begins with acarya Visakha, also an immediate disciple of the acarya Bhadrabahu. But unlike his Svetambara counterpart Sthulabhadra, acarya Visakha did not succeed in receiving the original scriptures, barring a few remnants of the Purva , which, as its name indicates, was believed to have predated even Mahavira. The mendicants of his lineage were thus left with no scripture that could be traced to Mahavira himself and hence maintained that the original words of Mahavira had been irrevocably lost. They rejected the authenticity of the Svetambara canon and set out to create a new body of a secondary scripture of their own called the Anuyogas . The earliest such extracanonical work based on the then extant Purva is called the Sat-khanda-agama (Scripture in Six Parts) and deals almost entirely with the doctrine of karma. It was compiled in an aphoristic (sutra) style by the acaryas Dharasena and Puspadanta, around the beginning of the second century A.D ., and remained accessible only to a few highly learned mendicant teachers within that order. (For the history of the Jaina canonical literature, see JPP , chap. 2.) Although revered as the most ancient scripture (siddhanta ), it was hardly a substitute for the original sermons of Mahavira or the exegesis by his ganadharas that could be employed to challenge the rival sect's claim to legitimacy. Kundakunda's singular contribution consists in his compiling a number of liturgical tracts and creating several masterly doctrinal works of his own, which provided a parallel canon for the destitute Digambara tradition. This earned him the everlasting gratitude of the Digambaras, who have for centuries invoked his name together with that of Mahavira and his chief ganadhara Indrabhuti Gautama, placing him ahead even of Bhadrabahu, Visakha, and some forty other elders (sthaviras ) in the lineage, thus making him virtually the founder of the Digambara sect, as illustrated by the following verse:

mangalam bhagavan Virah, mangalam Gautamo ganih,
mangalam Kundakundadyah, Jainadharmo 'stu mangalam.
(Pravacanasara , intro., n. 1)

(ii) The works attributed to Kundakunda, all of them in Prakrit, can be divided in three groups. The first group is a collection of ten bhaktis (devotional prayers), short compositions in praise of the acaryas (Acaryabhakti ), the scriptures (Srutabhakti ), the mendicant conduct (Caritrabhakti ), and so forth. They form the standard liturgical texts used by the Digambaras in their daily rituals and bear close resemblance to similar texts employed by the Svetambaras, suggesting the possibility of their origin in the canonical period prior to the division of the community. The second group comprises four original works described as "The Essence" (sara )—

namely, the Niyamasara (The Essence of the Restraint, or the mendicant discipline, in 187 verses), the Pancastikayasara (The Essence of the Five Existents, in 153 verses), the Samayasara (The Essence of Self-Realization, in 439 verses), and the Pravacanasara (The Essence of the Teaching, in 275 verses), all of which, because of their nonconventional or absolute (niscayanaya ) approach, have exerted a tremendous influence not only on the Digambara psyche but, as will be seen in Chapter VI, even on some of the leading members of the Svetambara community, both old and new. The last group consists of eight short texts called Prabhrta (Pkt. pahuda , i.e., a gift or a treatise), probably compilations from some older sources, on such topics as the right view (Darsanaprabhrta , in 36 verses), right conduct (Caritraprabhrta , in 44 verses), the scripture (Sutraprabhrta , in 27 verses), and so forth. Dr. A. N. Upadhye in his critical edition of the Pravacanasara has examined at great length the problems concerning the date and author-ship of these and other works attributed to Kundakunda and has placed him in the middle of the second century A.D.

(iii) The selection presented here is taken from the Prakrit Suttapahuda (Skt. Sutraprabhrta ). It is of special importance as it is the first extant Jaina text that not only challenges the mendicant status of the clothed (sacelaka) mendicants but also denies women access to the holy path explicitly on account of their biological condition. We do not know how old this controversy is or who might have initiated it prior to the time of Kundakunda. Both sects provide for the institution of the community (sangha) of nuns and admit that at the death of Mahavira there were more nuns (all of them clothed) in his mendicant order than monks—the number given is 14,000 monks and 36,000 nuns, the latter headed by the chief nun (ganini ) Candana. (See Intro., n. 39, and JSK II, p. 387.) There are many passages in the extant Svetambara canon that praise an acelaka (lit., "one without clothes") monk (see JPP , p. 13); but there is no evidence of any attempt to portray a clothed monk, and more importantly a nun, as deficient in ability to attain moksa (see note 3) on account of the clothing. In the absence of an older Digambara scripture to counter the Svetambara evidence, one can assume that Kundakunda is merely voicing an ancient belief held by the acelaka faction of Mahavira that women do not qualify for the full mendicant status accorded to a naked monk. But it is also possible to argue that the prohibition of moksa to women is of a later date and derives from the acelakas' denial of full mendicant status to monks who chose to remain clothed. Since both sects agree that women may never adopt nudity, the mendicant status denied to the clothed monks must necessarily be denied to them also. Since moksa is to be achieved only by

those who have attained to full mendicancy, women according to the acelaka view came to be seen as unfit to achieve spiritual liberation. In the: course of time this attitude may have grown sufficiently strong to emerge by the time of Kundakunda as one of the major dogmas of the Digambaras.

It should be noted, however, that there is as yet no categorical denial of moksa to a woman in this or other works of Kundakunda. But his words reproduced here provide the necessary scriptural authority for the Digambaras to conclude that since a woman is unable to assume the higher vows available to a man (see #7) she must be considered disqualified from attaining moksa as well. The controversy on the moksa of women thus begins in the present text, as the Digambara Kundakunda postulates the biological condition of women as the primary ground for his thesis. The ensuing debate provides repeated opportunities for an examination of this view and its consistency with the rest of the Jaina teachings. It also permits us to determine whether the two Jaina sects can resolve this problem through arguments presented in a "syllogistic" form (prayoga ) in accordance with the rules of Indian logic.

(iv) The translation of the eight verses of the Sutraprabhrta (Pkt. Suttapahuda ) is based on the text included in the Satprabhrtadisangrahah ., edited by Pandit Pannalal Soni and published in 1920. The printed edition also includes a Sanskrit commentary (tika ) by the Digambara bhattaraka (cleric) Srutasagara (c. 1500) that I have used in providing some of the notes.