In late medieval Jain literature and in the writings of early 20th century CE scholars (e.g., Burgess 1869; Sinclair Stevenson 1915), the term yati, applied to ascetics, has taken on a very pejorative connotation and has been used to refer to dissenting monks who are “considered to be a fallen class of monks, for they take money, ride about in palanquins, and keep watchmen and guards”. As monks of lax practices, such yatis have sometimes been assimilated to another category of criticised monks called caityavāsins, ‘monks living in a temple’, who are said to have enjoyed a life of power and luxury.
Strikingly, while the term śramaṇa or muni is used in the canonical and exegetical literature, the term yati appears frequently as an equivalent to those words in about ten long narrative works, mainly in prose and verse, written by monks between the 8th and 12th centuries CE (e.g., the Kuvalayamālā by Uddyotana, 779 CE, to the Pāsaṇasāhacaria by Devabhadra, 1112 CE). What does the usage of the term yati mean in this genre, which I have called romance-poem? Can we see in these works new roles of the monks and new ways of living in an evolving socio-political milieu? Can we say that the monks who compose these romance-poems and use the term yati are the ascetics who will be later labelled as caityavāsins? If so, can we trace features of the laxity in ascetic behaviour, such as a sedentary life and a lack of rigour and knowledge, which has been harshly criticised by their opponents from the 13th century CE onwards? Or do we see a different picture that confirms the testimony of other textual and epigraphic sources (e.g., prabandhas and the inscription of 1242 CE analysed by Shah 1955), that these caityavāsin monks, far from being defeated in a single debate as the reformer lineages such as the Kharataragaccha would have it, continued to be revered and powerful for more than two centuries after their supposed defeat? If so, this would suggest that there were different religious issues and other power struggles going on, which were then redefined and obscured by those caricatures of rule-abiding monks and lax monks.
Given the paucity of written, architectural and epigraphic evidence between the 8th and 12th centuries CE, the analysis of the image of monks revealed by the hitherto neglected romance-poems is a fundamental tool. I will challenge the traditional view of the existence of a binary opposition among the Śvetāmbara monks in early medieval history, to revisit the question of the laxity of the so-called caityavāsins, and thus to shed light on the complex but still shadowy monastic world at the turn of the first millennium, and to connect it with similar trends and developments in the later history of the Śvetāmbara and Digambara lineages.
In pre-modern Jain literature and in the writings of early 20th century CE scholars, the terms yati and caityavāsin, as applied to ascetics, have taken on a very pejorative connotation and have been used to refer to dissenting monks known for their lax practices. Strikingly, the term yati already appears as an equal to śramaṇa and muni in about ten long narrative works, mainly in prose and verse, written by monks between the 8th and 12th centuries CE. The aim of this paper is to examine in this under-explored corpus and in related works whether the use of the term yati applies to the so-called caityavāsins and if so, which type of monk it characterises in the complex and still shadowy monastic world of the turn of the first millennium.