Article: Monks and nuns

Monk and pupils
Image by Chandu Shah © Chandu Shah

All Jain mendicants are initiated into one of many mendicant orders within each sect. Early in the Jain tradition, teaching was passed on orally, with leading teachers collecting followers, who then passed on their teachings to their disciples and so on. These different groups descended from various teachers are termed mendicant lineages.

Śvetāmbara Mūrti-pūjaks call these groups gaccha – going or travelling together – while Digambaras know them as sangha.

Padābhiṣeka ceremony
Image by Shanti Panchal © Shanti Panchal

The hierarchy of monks and nuns depends on the individuals’ length of time as a mendicant, sex and office. Ordinary monks and nuns defer to those who have been monks and nuns for longer and to those who hold an official position. Nuns are always outranked by monks, even if they have been mendicants for longer and hold office.

Nowadays, among the Śvetāmbara Mūrti-pūjaks, each mendicant lineage is headed by a number of ācāryas. Only the sect of the Añcala-gaccha has a single ācārya. The mendicants of the non-Mūrtipūjak sects of Sthānaka-vāsīn and Terāpanthin are also led by a single ācārya in each sect. Official posts deal with different responsibilities in the gaccha, such as the pannyāsa, who is responsible for groups of ordinary monks, called munis or sādhus.

Digambara monks are ranked according to their status as full mendicants, novice mendicants or lay men who have taken some renunciation vows. They have similar official posts to those found in the Śvetāmbara sect.

Nuns have a less strict hierarchy than monks within their own communities of women. Although they usually outnumber monks among the Śvetāmbaras, nuns must defer to male mendicants, even if they have been initiated for longer and have official positions. Among both the principal sects, communities of nuns are usually supervised by monks, who also normally appoint their leaders and initiate new recruits.

Śvetāmbara monastic bowls
Image by Nalini Balbir © Nalini Balbir

In line with their fourth vow of non-attachment to worldly things, monks and nuns do not own anything. The local lay community provides them with monastic equipment, which is believed to be the minimum necessary for correct religious life.

Monastic equipment varies according to the mendicant’s sect and mendicant lineage. Ascetics of all sects use monastic brooms to sweep an area before sitting or lying down so that insects and minute beings are not harmed. This helps them keep their vow of non-harm. The Śvetāmbara broom is made of cotton or wool strands while the broom used by Digambaras is made of peacock feathers.

Śvetāmbara ascetics use an alms bowl, water pot and a mouth-cloth. The mouth-cloth stops minute beings being accidentally inhaled and avoids injuring wind-bodied beings. Monks and nuns from Śvetāmbara Mūrti-pūjak sects may also use staffs, bookstands and seats.

Digambara mendicants eat alms directly from their hands and carry a water pot for toilet purposes.

Digambara monks walking
Image by Wellcome Trust Library © Wellcome Library, London

Jain ascetics also are known for their wandering lifestyle – vihāra. Expected to travel around instead of staying in one place as householders do, monks and nuns may cover up to around 30 kilometres a day. This ‘wandering’ – vihāra – entails walking from one place to another every day or every few days. This custom may also be linked to the vow of non-attachment.

Mendicants wander all the time except during the annual rainy season, when they remain in one place for these four months. There are three principal reasons for this practice. Firstly, travelling is difficult because of floods, poor roads and so on, especially as mendicants traditionally travel on foot. Secondly, it reduces the likelihood of breaking the first vow of non-violence, because the warmth and humidity of the monsoon season result in a great increase in various forms of life. Last, while the monks and nuns stay in one place they have more contact with lay people. This encourages devotion among the local lay community.

Digambara monk seeks alms
Image by Nalini Balbir © Nalini Balbir

Jain mendicants are not allowed to cook food themselves. They are also not allowed to get it cooked by anybody in the premises where they stay. Thus they have to go to lay people’s houses to get food. The alms tour takes place twice a day for Śvetāmbara mendicants, once in the morning, and once in the afternoon. Digambara ascetics seek alms once a day.

Finding correctly offered alms that are suitable may take hours. However, all food has to be eaten before sunset.

Digambara monks and novices
Image by Takeo Kimiya © Takeo Kimiya

This has become the most obvious way to tell the difference between Śvetāmbara and Digambara mendicants. Śvetāmbara means ‘white-clad’ while the latter means ‘sky-clad’ – that is, naked.

However, not all Digambara mendicants go without clothes. Only those who are full mendicants go completely nude because it is considered part of being able to renounce all possessions and have no attachment to anything. Neither male novice mendicants nor nuns go nude. Among the Jains, nudity produces great respect because only those who are capable of full detachment from worldly matters can practise it in total freedom.

In early Śvetāmbara scriptures, there is some flexibility regarding the connection of clothes to the idea of non-possession. As suggested by their name, Śvetāmbara monastic robes are white. In Western Indian manuscript paintings of the medieval period, the robe of the Śvetāmbara mendicants is depicted as white or transparent with white dots. In later times, the robe is simply shown as white, as it is today.

Dhanya and Śālibhadra fast unto death
Image by British Library © CC0 1.0 (Creative Commons Public Domain)

For Jains the conditions of someone’s death are important because the individual’s mental state at this time helps determine destiny in the next birth. For this reason and also because one should avoid living in circumstances that prevent keeping vows or obligations, it is traditional for Jains to try to exercise control over their deaths. It is especially achieved by mendicants as part of ideal ascetic conduct.

The ultimate method of having some control over one’s death is that of sallekhanā – literally ‘thinning out’ – or anaśana, which means ‘fasting unto death’. It implies gradually giving up food and liquids in order to purify the mind and destroy all negative karma and passions. Fasting to death is not considered to be suicide, which is forbidden in Jain belief. A Jain freely chooses the ‘sage’s death’, which is recognised as a difficult choice and is honoured as an expression of devotion.

The mendicant who makes this decision generally goes to a secluded place on a hilltop. Inscriptions and memorials found in places such as Śravaṇa Beḷgoḷa are evidence of this longstanding practice. It is still part of the mendicant’s life today, especially among Digambaras, and is considered to be remarkable and worthy of great respect.

Śvetāmbara Sthānaka-vāsin or Terā-panthin nuns
Image by arjunstc – Arjun © CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Though the ‘fourfold community’ of the Jains is composed of monks, nuns, lay men and lay women, the proportion of mendicants to laity is likely to have always been very small. A large lay community is probably needed to support a relatively low number of monks and nuns. Estimates of the number of Jains in the world vary from around 5 to 10 million, concentrated in India.

Nearly all Jain monks and nuns are in India because attitudes towards modernity, especially transportation, stop them travelling to Jains outside the country. This results in a handful of mendicants tending to the spiritual needs of over 100,000 lay members of the Jain diaspora. These are chiefly Śvetāmbara Terāpanthin samaṇas and samaṇīs, who are special categories of mendicants permitted to travel, established in 1980 by Ācārya Tulsī.

This table shows the number of Jain monks and nuns in 1999, which is when the figures were last verified.

Adapted slightly from the table in the article by Peter Flügel, ‘Demographic Trends in Jaina Monasticism’ in Studies in Jain History and Culture, edited by P. Flügel, London, Routledge, 2006.