Scholarship on the Upāsakadaśāh goes back to the nineteenth century, with Augustus Frederic Rudolf Hoernlé 1890 translation. Despite its long availability, historical analysis has so far largely neglected the text’s unique function within the Śvetāmbara Jaina Canon, i.e., as one of the earliest and most authoritative voices that legitimize the presence of the laity as legitimate followers of the teachings of Mahāvīra. Even less attention has been paid to the ten narrative tales that help construct a socio-religious rubric for the householder laity within the text by pairing a complicated set of karmic ramifications to the householder and the housewife’s successful or less-than-successful performance.
In terms of its attitude towards the laity, the content and tonality of the Upāsakadaśāh depart markedly from the earliest strata of the Śvetāmbara canon (the first books of the Ācāranga, Sūtrakṛtāṅga, and the Uttarādhyayana). We find in all the latter a highly negative view of lay existence, with the Sūtrakṛtāṅga comparing marriage to emasculation and fatherhood to servanthood. There is a pressing need to understand better the departures of the Upāsakadaśāh, a project which I sketch in this presentation. I first provide historical context by surveying just how the laity were legitimized in the preceding centuries following the passing of Mahāvīra. I do so in conversation with Suzuko Ohira, Johannes Bronkhorst, and Andrew More, who have all written on the legitimization of the laity. Here, I highlight the shifting historical contexts that necessitated the inclusion of the laity to ensure Jainism’s continued survival through changing economic, cultural, and religious contexts. I then trace the changing representation of the laity across multiple strata of the Śvetāmbara canon.
I then turn to the descriptive nature of the doctrine proscribed to the householder in the Upāsakadaśāh, i.e., the five Aṇuvratas, the three guņa vratas, and the śikşā vratas. The twelve vows of the householder have received scholarly attention, including by John Cort in Jains of the World, in terms of their social, religious, and philosophical function. Here, I argue that these vows, while viewable as ‘timeless’ teleologically, were actually historically contingent negotiations between the householder laity and the ascetic components of the wider Jain Śvetāmbara community. I do so by examining specific choices of words, descriptions, and commodities laid out in the descriptions of the vows provided in the Upāsakadaśāh.
I then focus on specific narrative case studies of Ānanda and Kāmadeva. Within the Upāsakadaśāh, Ānanda, and Kāmadeva are the protagonists of the first two lectures or ādhyanas. Both men are wealthy householders in the city where they reside, are commercially successful, politically affluent, and hold high social esteem. Both become lay followers of Mahāvīra after hearing him speak and take on the twelve vows of the householder. Towards the end of their lives, they renounce their position as the head of their household and begin their spiritual pratimas. I examine how men’s pratimas were imaged within the narrative framework of the text and what message this narrative was likely intended to convey. I argue that Ānanda’s tale was told to reify the idea that the status of a śrāvaka who has completed his eleven pratimas changes to that of a Jain mūni or monk. Kāmadeva’s tale was told to impress on the śrāvaka that once undertaken, there is no backing out from their pratimas.
In all, this paper contributes to the broader panel by raising several key questions: Why did Śrāvakācāra texts become so important in a predominantly asceticism-driven religion? What were the specific historical contexts that shaped householder conduct, and what negotiations were entailed in the formation of the vows of the householder? How does the dialectic of historical specificity and transcendental doctrine echo in the shared works analyzed by this panel? Answering these questions, as I do in brief in this paper, highlights a series of understudied negotiations between the Jain doctrine and social power and illuminates more generally a variety of still poorly understood socio-religious worlds of early South Asia.
Śrāvakācāra cognates the Sanskrit words śrāvaka, literally translatable to “one who listens” and used contextually to indicate the Jain householder laity, and ācāra meaning “conduct,” together meaning roughly lay conduct. In that sense, the Upāsakadaśāh, the Seventh Angā of the Śvetāmbara canon, fulfills just the function of a śrāvakācāra without being so categorized by Jains or scholars of Jainism as such. This makes the Upāsakadaśāh a unique example of a text that focuses on lay conduct whilst being part of the core of the Śvetāmbara canon. This paper will historicize the Upāsakadaśāh’s role as one of the earliest consolidated attempts by the predominantly monastic Jain ascetics to situate the laity within their theological-philosophical framework. It will analyze how the framers of the Śvetāmbara canon constructed a consolidated discourse on lay conduct, complete with both doctrine and narrative tales that image the ideal Śvetāmbara śrāvaka.