Holding Out for a Husband ‘Til the End of the Fast: Wifehood, Widowhood, and Female Renunciation in Two Jain <i>Mahābhārata</i> Adaptations
Among the Dharmic religious traditions, Jainism is unique for its continuous tradition of female monastics. Jain monastic women have made up a large part of Jain communities up to this day. Naturally, their prominent position in Jain society is reflected in the countless depictions of Jain nuns (<...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2025-03-01
|
| Series: | Religions |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/16/3/314 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Among the Dharmic religious traditions, Jainism is unique for its continuous tradition of female monastics. Jain monastic women have made up a large part of Jain communities up to this day. Naturally, their prominent position in Jain society is reflected in the countless depictions of Jain nuns (<i>āryikā</i>/<i>sādhvī</i>) in Jain narrative literature. However, despite Jain narratives sometimes extolling renunciation as an alternative, often even superior, ideal to wifehood, there remains a fundamental tension between the ideologies of normative Jain wifehood and renunciation as well as the question of widowhood. In this article, I explore how two Digambara Sanskrit texts deal with the question of premature widowhood and renunciation in their adaptation of the Mahābhārata narrative. Whereas Jinasena’s <i>Harivaṃśapurāṇa</i> (783 CE) stress the value of <i>pativratā</i>-ideology as an appropriate response for prematurely widowed young Jain women, Śubhacandra’s <i>Pāṇḍavapurāṇa</i> (1552 CE) adapts the exact same episodes, but introduces an explicit ambivalence towards the idea of young Jain women renouncing to become Jain nuns. By comparing these two Digambara adaptations, I wish to show how Digambara Jain narratives in Sanskrit dealt with the same tension between Jain wifehood and renunciation hitherto mostly discussed with reference to Jain narratives in the vernacular. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |