Much of the history of Jainism has been shaped by the reformist context in which it was gathered by western scholars. In the Śvetāmbara sect, 20th century CE scholars gathered most of their material from saṃvegī sādhus, who had recently all but succeeded in reforming the yati renouncers out of the tradition. This colored Jain histories of the modern era, either by characterizing yati monks by monastic laxity or śithilatā, or by leaving them out of Jain history altogether. When yatis are mentioned in histories of Jainism, they are characterized as corrupt priests who took either partial or diminished vows. In reality, yatis were highly venerated renouncers with large followings. The question remains, however, did they take the five great vows of a proper Jain monk? This paper will survey colonial era evidence, from gazetteers to invitation scrolls, to argue that the term “semi-renunciant” mischaracterizes the actual status of yati renouncers.
Laxity (śithiltā), especially in connection with the practice of esoteric sciences, is nothing new among Jain monastics. The Sūtrakṛtāṅga Sūtra warns those who practice magic arts of bad rebirths. Viyāhapannatti 10.4 gives the following taxonomy of deviant monks: ‘inert’ (pāsattha), ‘languid’ (osanna), ‘bad’ (kusīla), and ‘self-willed’ (ahāchanda). The 6th century CE Niśīthabhāṣya elaborates on the first term from the second list, pāsattha (skt. pārśvastha), which yatis are often condemned as, and states that there are two classes: savvapāsattha who violate every aspect of Jainism and desapāsattha who are lax with their conduct. Later writers also associated pāsattha monks with magical practices. These concerns never went away, nor did the lax practices of Jain monastics. Over time, a class of Śvetāmbara monks developed called caityavāsins who lived permanently in temples and appropriated temple funds for their own uses. Many gacchas (monastic orders) which exist today trace their origin to the reformation against these caityavāsin monks and their practices. The tension between yatis and saṃvegīs, in fact, is sometimes considered an extension of the debates between temple-dwelling caityavāsins and their forest-dwelling opponents. Cort calls this tension a continuation of these fights and Dundas calls it a mutation.
The term yati simply means “ascetic,” being interchangeable, historically, with the variety of other terms denoting a renouncer: sādhu, muni, nirgrantha, etc. This makes identifying yatis more challenging in earlier sources. However, eventually the term took on its connotation of a special, lax renouncer. Dundas writes that the wide range of inappropriate behavior denoted by the term ‘parśvāstha’ suggests “not so much an interest in identifying specific delinquency as the providing of the means by which the character of the upright (saṃvigna, suvihita) monk could be shaped and recognized.” It is likely that the term ‘yati’ similarly solidified its degraded reputation in contradistinction to the ascending saṃvegī movement. Scholars have used a variety of descriptors in the brief instances where they have dealt with the figure of the yati. Flügel describes them as sedentary ascetics who fulfill ritual and administrative duties but who make no pledge to fulfill the mahāvratas. Cort also calls them sedentary and draws on Michael Carrithers’ work on Digambara ascetics in Southern India to use the term “domesticated.” Elsewhere, he calls yatis “landed monks...who took lesser vows.” Dundas uses the term “non-initiated” in his definition and says that their “non-mendicancy” made them scarcely comparable to “fully initiated monks”. Cort, relying on Ḍuggaḍ, writes that yatis take the vow of celibacy in its mahāvrata form and the other four vows “in lesser forms that approximated to the anuvrats.” Flügel writes yatis do not take the mahāvrata of non-possession, though Hamilton claims that yatis take the mahāvrata of non-possession when they have no expectation of becoming a śrīpūjya (head of a yati lineage), who would allegedly take on possessions as part of his office.
These characterizations are not corroborated by colonial era sources and texts from within the yati tradition. Walker (c. 1820), Burgess (1884), and Campbell (1901), all describe yati and śrīpūjya dīkṣā ceremonies and explicitly note that their initiation ceremonies were the same or virtually the same as those of reformist saṃvegīs. Burgess only notes that during keśaloñca, yatis’ heads are shaven and five hairs are plucked, as opposed to sādhus who pull out their hair in five handfuls. Vijñaptipatras, or invitation scrolls from certain Jain communities inviting monks to spend cāturmāsa with them, often use epithets and honorifics referencing a yatis high status, strict asceticism, and taking of the five vows. Published biographies of yatis do not make any mention of diminished vows and in fact eulogize the difficulty of their monastic life.
Yatis were also active reformers of the Jain tradition. They took up high positions in the Jain Śvetāmbara Conference which shaped much of North Indian Jainism. Yatis acted as judges in debates between saṃvegī renouncers, suggesting that their input on ideology and praxis was valued, even among reformers. They also held yati conferences where they passed resolutions limiting yati conduct. Some yati lineages, in fact, had conduct that was more strict than certain reformist lineages operating today. From these conference reports, however, we get a glimpse at the slow dissolution of yati praxis and their association with laxity. Gujarati language reports mention great concern over “pseudo-yatis” who allegedly wore the monastic robes only sometimes and were overly concerned with earning money from ritual practice. This is in line with the testimonies of modern yatis from intact lineages, who do not consider all of the current remaining “yatis” to be genuine. In fact, the only major evidence that yatis did not take the five vows, testimony from modern Tapāgaccha monks, seems to testify to a practice of saṃvegī lineages to categorize lax saṃvegī monks as yatis to keep them within the monastic fold or to use them in legal disputes over the ownership of monastic property. These yatis seem to have had little, if any, connection to the historical yatis that dominated Śvetāmbara Jainism prior to the early 20th century CE.
Much of the history of Jainism has been shaped by the reformist context in which it was gathered by western scholars. In the Śvetāmbara sect, 20th century CE scholars gathered most of their material from saṃvegī sādhus, who had recently all but succeeded in reforming the yati renouncers out of the tradition. This colored Jain histories of the modern era, either by characterizing yati monks by monastic laxity or śithilatā, or by leaving them out of Jain history altogether. When yatis are mentioned in histories of Jainism, they are characterized as corrupt priests who took either partial or diminished vows. In reality, yatis were highly venerated renouncers with large followings. The question remains whether they took the five great vows of a proper Jain monk. This paper will survey colonial era evidence, from gazetteers to invitation scrolls, to argue that the term “semi-renunciant” mischaracterizes the actual status of yati renouncers.