The Uses of Jain Sati Name Lists

8 THINKING COLLECTIVELY ABOUT JAIN SATIS The uses of Jain sati name lists M. Whitney Kelting Jains venerate virtuous women (satis) who are virtuous and who, through their virtue, protect, promote, or merely uphold Jain values and the Jain religion. Jains narrate the lives of satis both individually and in the context of Jain Universal Histories (such as the Fvetambar Trisastifalakapurusacaritra of Hemacandra and the Digambar Adipuraja of Jinasena) and some of these satis are named in early Jain texts like the Fvetambar Kalpa Sutra. Fvetambar Jains also list satis (often sixteen of the following names: Brahmi, Sundari, Candanbala, Rajimati, Draupadi, Kaufalya, Mrgavati, Sulasa, Sita, Subhadra, Fiva, Kunti, Filavati, Damayanti, Puspacula, Prabhavati, and Padmavati) who stand in for the greater totality of satis. They also have more inclusive lists which extend the title sati to an unbounded number of women. Sati lists, through their fluidity and their inclusivity, serve as representatives of the totality of women’s virtue and as such are efficacious primarily by creating auspiciousness but also by reducing karma. While satis are revered in all Jain sects, this discussion is centered on the ways that Fvetambar Murtipujak Tapa Gacch Jains have constructed the idea of collectivities of satis.1 At present there are five gacchs (mendicant lineages) of Fvetambar Murtipujak Jain mendicants: Tapa, Añcal, Khartar, Paican, and Tristuti. Between 85 and 90 percent of the Fvetambar Murtipujak mendicants belong to the Tapa Gacch, which was formed in the thirteenth century CE, when the mendicant Jagaccandrasuri left the mainstream Vata Gacch as a response to mendicant laxity.2 The Jains with whom I conduct my research in Maharashtra identify themselves with Tapa Gacch mendicants, and when they perform rituals where the liturgies vary from gacch to gacch, they likewise choose those associated with the Tapa Gacch.3 To examine the Tapa Gacch Jain conception of satis, we can look at the ways in which these Jains frame the multiplicity and/or collectivity of satis through their presence in recitations of lists of the names of the satis. Four short texts were chosen for discussion in this chapter because they were the most commonly found sati lists and were used in ritual performances. They are the Brahmi 181 M. WHITNEY KELTING Candanbalika (BC), the So¬ Sati no Chand (The Verses of the Sixteen Satis; SSC), the Bharahesara ni Sajjhay (The Instruction on Lord Bharat; BS), and the Sata Sati ni Sajjhay (The Instruction on the True and Virtuous Men and Women, SSS). Here it is important to distinguish between ritual texts (those intended for performance) and ritual instructions (those which guide performance) (Bruhn 1981: 21). The four texts discussed hereafter are ritual texts intended for performance. I include short glosses which serve to give an interpretation to these texts as well; these commentarial glosses should be understood as a kind of ritual instruction informing the performer of the efficacy and meaning of the texts. The texts discussed in this chapter are each linked to laity by practices drawn from mendicant praxis, such as the pratikramaj (ritual repentance and expiation of sin) and blessings bestowed by the recitation of makgalik (holy verses). Further, these texts are neither restricted to the monks nor relegated to the laity. The uses and interpretations of these lists of satis matter because they are embedded within texts shared by all members of the four-fold congregation suggesting that these satis names have an efficacy of their own and are significant beyond the standard explanation of satis being merely good role models for laywomen. One can think of the lists of satis as falling into three patterns of use or under- standing: (1) the totality of individual narratives as a corpus of ritual texts for lay practices; (2) the unbounded collectivity of women’s virtue which permits Jain women’s identification with satis as a model for linking them and their practices with satis and the virtues of satis; and (3) name lists as mantras whose recitation is efficacious. The first pattern, which is not central to our discussion here, will be briefly treated in the following lines and the latter two will be addressed in greater detail in their turn. The first pattern in the use of sati collectivities manifests in the annual calendar of rituals (holidays, ceremonies, and fasts) in which sati narratives are recited; on these occasions women recite or read narratives individually. The idea of a group or the totality of satis is distinctly missing in these ritual texts: There is no sense of interchangeability and the sati invoked in narrative is the one whose narrative and name is efficacious in that context.4 Though I am not focussing on this kind of telling of sati narratives here, it is important to note that most of the time among contemporary Tapa Gacch lay Jains satis are invoked as individuals through the telling of particular narratives and not in the form of a group or of the totality of satis. However, one can think of the collection of these individual narratives as forming (with one or two narratives of great men such as FreyaÅs) a corpus of Jain ritual texts (katha) associated predominantly with fasting. The bulk of the chapter is divided into four sections. The first examines the discourse of satis and the ways sati discourse manifests itself in the Jain tradition. The second addresses the history, context and the text of each of the four lists discussed in this chapter. Third, the lists are analyzed for the ways in which variation in the content of the lists indicates an unbounded totality of virtue and how this unbounded ideal allows for Jains to see Jain laywomen and nuns in connection with satis; in essence, this is the second pattern of use. The fourth analyzes the 182 THINKING COLLECTIVELY ABOUT JAIN SATIS third pattern of use for sati lists as mantric, more generally articulating the ways in which the recitation of the satis names is efficacious in karma reduction (as part of the pratikramaj) and as makgalik (auspicious verses especially propitious for the start of any religious practice). Satis and the Jain tradition There has been much scholarship dedicated to defining the term “sati” and outlining its use in Hindu sociopolitical and religious contexts.5 There is an important distinction drawn between the Hindu religious use of the term “sati” which refers to a virtuous woman and the British use of the term “suttee” to refer to the act of a widow dying on her husband’s funeral pyre an act called “going with” (or sahagaman) in the Hindu context.6 The sati of the Hindu context is one who fulfills utterly her role as a dedicated wife (pativrata) and whose dedication to her husband extends to her own acts of self-sacrifice, though not necessarily through death (Harlan 1992: 118–133, 172–181, Weinberger-Thomas 1999: 28–34). A sati in the Hindu context always articulates her virtue through her dedication to her husband and her chastity. However, in the Hindu context the intention to die before or with one’s husband is key to attaining the virtue that makes one a sati. A sati who succeeds in her total self-sacrifice by dying with her husband can reach the highest level of virtue attainable for a Hindu woman, that is, to be a satimata who serves as a protector deity for her family and others. Jains likewise participate in the language of the chaste, dedicated, and self- denying wife who protects her husband and her husband’s family. Many contemporary Jain women, like their Hindu counterparts, are very concerned with protecting their status as auspiciously married women (saubhagyavati) and perform fasts and other rituals specifically with the intent of protecting their husband and children.7 These rituals include the recitation and study of particular sati narratives or of texts which have sati narratives embedded in them. Jain sati narratives often center around the protagonist’s chastity and protection of husband, but I found elsewhere that the language of virtue in these narratives can also be linked to the renunciation of family (Kelting 2003). The Jain use of the term always carries with it the language of virtue often articulated through the language of chastity or celibacy but without the idealization or potential of self- sacrifice; rather, Jains see the highest potential for women in renunciation rather than self-sacrifice for husband and family. Jain sati lists share several names and narratives found (with some subtle and some not so subtle variations) in Hindu narratives of virtuous women – an important indicator of the shared discourse of women’s virtue between these two traditions. However, the particular status of these narratives in the Jain corpus suggest the ways that Jains articulate the superiority of their models for women’s virtue. The narratives of satis who are also found in Hindu narratives are the less commonly told stories (except that of Damayanti) and they are also often (like 183 M. WHITNEY KELTING Kunti who lives on after the self-immolation of Madri who is not a sati for Jains) articulated against the Hindu model of the sati who dies with her husband (sahagamani). Because so many of the Jain sati narratives end with the sati taking ordination (diksa) as a Jain nun, we can see the more than just implicit juxtaposition of taking diksa against the sinful (here, to Jains) path of self- immolation. This balance is particularly problematic because at some point each of these women either has to die without renouncing, renounce her husband, or be a widow who then renounces.

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