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Heroic Wives
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Heroic Wives
Rituals, Stories, and the Virtues of
Jain Wifehood
M . WHITNEY KELTING
1
2009
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kelting, Mary Whitney.
Heroic wives : rituals, stories, and the virtues of Jain
wifehood / by M. Whitney Kelting.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-538964-7
1. Women in Jainism. 2. Jaina women—Conduct of life.
3. Wives—India—Conduct of life. 4. Marriage—Religious aspects—Jainism.
5. Jainism—Rituals. I. Title
BL1375.W65K44 2009
294.40860 55—dc22 2009004593
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
For Steven and Read
and in Memory of
Lilavati Shantilal Shah
Acknowledgments
I have been thinking about Jain wifehood for a long time. Over the
years, I have had an enormous amount of help and support from
family, friends, and colleagues around the world. This project could
never have been completed without the generous financial support of
a senior research fellowship from the American Institute of Indian
Studies and the tactical support of A.I.I.S., in particular Dr. Pradeep
Mehendiratta and Purnima Mehta. I am especially grateful for their
support of my decision to remain in India after the September 11
bombings. I also wish to thank several institutions for generous
support for shorter research trips related to this project, without which
I could not have followed up on leads and observed rituals associated
with weddings and particular festivals. Thanks to St. Lawrence
University (2000), Grinnell College (2002), and Northeastern
University (2005, 2006, and 2008). In India, I was given access to the
Jain collections at the L. D. Institute of Indology and the Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute, for which I am grateful. A special note
of thanks is due to the Mount Abu Temple Trust for allowing me
special access to the Rājul image there and to the Sri Munisuvrata
Temple Trust, Thane, for allowing me to take photographs.
I wish to thank colleagues and friends who have supported me
in so many varied ways, challenged my thinking, and clarified my
arguments surrounding this project in conversations, phone
calls, letters, and email everywhere from parties in New York and
conferences in North America and Europe to tea shops in Pune:
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Kathy and John Anderson, Alan Babb, Wendy Bellermann, Dan Blacksberg,
Paul Buckley, Angus Burke, Matt Burke, Uday Chandra, Paul Courtright, Anne
Csete, Dena Davis, Richard Davis, Jeff and Sandy DeSmedt, Peter Flügel, Tyler
Gore, Phyllis Granoff, Michael Greenwald, Christine Halvorson, Bill Hamilton,
Bill Harman, Maria Heim, Steve Heim, Nadege Joly, Shuchi Kapila, Julie Kurd,
Carolyn Lockwood, Alison Mackenzie-Shah, Margaret McCarthy, Jeff McKib-
ben, Michael Meister, Mekhala Natavar, Anastasia Norton-Piliavsky, Christian
Novetzke, Leslie Orr, Paul Paulson, Nancy Pierce, Tracy Pintchman, the late
Selva Raj, Leigh Ramsaywak-Gore, Jo Reynell, Henry Rietz, Warren Senders,
Fred Smith, Mary Jane Smith, Zard Snodgrass, Vijaya Sundaram, Jorge and
Marguerite Torres, Anne Vallely, Steve Vose, Ivette Vargas, Joe Walser, and
Melissa Watson. At Northeastern, my colleagues have all been fantastic, but
especially: Heather Hindman, Steve Nathanson, Ron Sandler, and Susan Setta.
I wish to thank Cynthia Read at Oxford University Press for her support of this
project and to thank the three anonymous readers of this manuscript at Oxford
for their helpful comments. Thanks also to my students who literally cheered
me through the writing of this book.
In particular, I wish to thank John Cort, Paul Dundas, and Kristi Wiley,
who have answered many questions about things Jain, helped me with difficult
translations, and generally cheered me on; beyond being exemplary colleagues,
they are true friends.
I have had the excellent help of several research assistants: at Grinnell
College, Alok Shah; and at Northeastern University: Marcie Ristich, Laura
Mangano, Malcolm Purinton, and Sam Kasuli; and my departmental adminis-
trative assistant and former student at Northeastern, Kendra Sarna.
Too often we forget to thank those whose work frees us to do our research
and writing; with this in mind, I wish to thank everyone at the Russell Call
Children’s Center, whose enlightened and loving care of my son provided me
with the time and energy to write this book.
In India, I wish to thank everyone in the Shivajinagar congregation, where
I am continually welcomed at congregational events. The Śrı̄ Pārśva Mahilā
Mandal continues to serve as my research base and focus of my dearest friends.
_˙ ˙
I want to thank and recognize the contributions of many women in Pune, but
also in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Junnar, Karad, Kamshet, Morbar, Mount Abu,
and Patan, who spoke to me about their lives; for the sake of your privacy
I cannot name you here, but I sincerely hope you all know how much I cherish
your gifts of time and friendship. Thanks to Madhav Bhandare, Bhagyashri
Bhandare, and Shantaram Gavade for incredible tactical support in Pune,
and Nanda Pandhare for managing our home in 1993–1994 and again in
2001–2002. I must give particular thanks to the Alandikar family, who have
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
offered me a piyar to which I have returned over and over again for the last
fifteen years, and who have given me so much love and support (providing help
in everything from identifying potential contacts and searching for relevant
information while I am away in the States to feeding me and my family literally
hundreds of khākhrā) throughout this project that it can truly be said that
without them I would never have been able to complete this book. Dadi, the
late Lilavati Shantilal Shah, who died during the writing of this book, was
my dearest and most generous companion; there are no thanks great enough
to match her generosity and love.
I thank my entire extended family, a sprawling crowd spanning four
generations, whose joy in being together is a model of happiness I carry with
me wherever I go. I must give extra special thanks to my mother Whitney Keen
and my sister Jettie Sacchini for their inspiring interest in this project.
I dedicate this book to three people:

Most important, I thank my husband, Steve Runge, for his full-on engage-
ment with India, for his tactical and editorial magnificence, for the use of his
photographs, for his sense of humor while our lives were so unpredictable, for
being a full-time father for our son during his early years, for postponing his
important writing so that I could finish this book, and above all else for his
seemingly infinite love and support of me, his often less than perfect though
always devoted, wife.
My son Read, who was born to us in the middle of this project, I thank for
his patience with my work, for the joy he brings to every day, for the pride he
shows when he speaks of my book, and for his love of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of
Fire,” which seemed so transcendently appropriate to the writing of this book.
Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of Dadi, Lilavati Shantilal Shah,
who has surely moved on to a meritorious birth worthy of her piety, generosity,
and kindness, but who, in leaving this life, has left a void in mine.
Contents
Note on Translation and Transliteration, xiii
1. Thinking about Wifehood, 3
Part I. Making Ideal Marriages
2. Fasting, Saubhāgya, and Jain Satı̄ Narratives, 35
3. Jain Satı̄s, Women’s Agency, and Bad Marriages, 55
4. The Perfect Marriage, 79
Part II. Negotiating Discourses
5. Jains and Satı̄mātā Discourse, 109
6. Embodying Wifehood, 141
Conclusion: The Pleasures of Jain Wifehood, 171
Notes, 181
Glossary, 223
Works Cited, 233
Index, 245
Note on Translation
and Transliteration
My research was conducted in a mixture of Gujarati and Hindi

(Marwari and sometimes that elusive tongue, Bombay Hindi). All
of the translations in this book are mine, unless otherwise indicated.
If no source is given for the text itself, that text was transcribed from
my tape recordings or collected orally into my field notes.
Translation, in itself, is an imperfect art. I tried to retain the feel of
the language in these translations, but when a choice of fidelities
arose, I chose accuracy of meaning. I have used a standardized
transliteration format recommended by the ALA-LC. In quotations
from printed texts, I retain the spellings in the texts, even if words
have been spelled “incorrectly.” As a rule, I did not include the final
“a,” as it was not pronounced in Gujarati and Hindi, unless the
original text was in Prakrit and Sanskrit. The exceptions are in words
that would end with a consonant that is difficult to pronounce without
the final “a” or other words in which I heard the final “a” voiced by the
speakers; for example, the word mantr was pronounced “mantra” and
moks seemed to retain the edge of the “a” in the pronunciation
˙
“moksa.” In order to make the book less cumbersome, I have decided
˙
to translate some words into English in spite of the imperfections of
the translation (for example, sādhvı̄ translated as “nun”), but I did this
only when the particulars of the definition, which were lost in trans-
lation, were not relevant to my discussion. I am sure there are mis-
taken judgments and inconsistencies; for this I ask the readers’
forgiveness.
Heroic Wives
1
Thinking about Wifehood
Praises to Ādināth, the first Jina, make our prayers fruitful.

At sunrise, create auspiciousness, and repeat the sixteen satı̄s’ names.
— (Sol Satı̄no Chand 1)
_
In 1993, while paging through a copy of a ubiquitous Jain hymn
collection, I came across these lines in the Sol Satı̄no Chand, a hymn
_
to the sixteen satı̄s.1 I was surprised to find satı̄s venerated in the Jain
tradition, guided as I was at the time by the conflation in colonial and
Orientalist writings of the term satı̄ with widow immolation, and by the
assumption that this violent death would be one which Jains would
reject.2 In essence, satı̄ means “true woman”—specifically a female hero;
the basis of her heroism is in being a devoted wife (a pativratā) without
peer. While it did not surprise me that the term pativratā would be part of
Jain laywomen’s discourse, I certainly had not expected satı̄s to appear as
subjects of devotional hymns. Nor did I know then that answering the
question: “What are satı̄s doing in this hymnal?” would take the better
part of eight years. I asked many Jains about this text and, although
all the laywomen and mendicants I asked knew about the sixteen satı̄s,
few recited this very text. (In fact, the only time I observed this text
being recited was at the start of a lecture given by a nun about satı̄s.)
And yet I continued to turn up many other references to these Jain
satı̄s in other hymns, rituals, and stories, and they demanded my
further attention. I returned to this material for my next project.
During my primary research trip for this project in 2001–2002,
4 HEROIC WIVES
I found that the more I learned about Jain satı̄s, the more ubiquitous and central
to Jain laywomen’s religiosity they appeared, and the more baffling their presence
came to seem. Jainism’s spiritual aim is, ultimately, to disengage oneself from
worldly existence, and Jain devotionalism is directed at those souls that have
reached that perfect detachment and become liberated. Perfection, to a Jain, is
the omniscience that arises out of the absence of karma. How is it, then, that
there is this vast corpus of popular texts, many of them written by prominent
scholar-monks between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries that illustrate
the distinctly worldly virtues of devoted Jain wives? And how did these heroic
Jain wives come to be known by the same term as is used in Hindu religiocultural
contexts, without the rite of widow immolation but with many similar virtues?
Jain satı̄s, like Jain laywomen, inhabit the intersection between South Asian
discourse of pativratā and the Jain discourse of renunciation and liberation-
directed practices.
In this volume, I examine the ways that Jain laywomen negotiate the
complex and sometimes contradictory ideologies of women’s virtues, which
shape their thinking about wifehood. Jain satı̄ narratives and their related
rituals suggest that women can and do control the state of their marriage,
and that women can succeed in negotiating the ideologies of devoted wifehood
(pativratā), auspicious wifehood (saubhāgya), virtuous womanhood (satı̄) and
renunciation (moksa mārg). By analyzing several Jain satı̄ narratives (Sulasā,
˙
Rohinı̄, Subhadrā, Añjanā, Maynāsundarı̄, Rājul, Brahmı̄-Sundarı̄, and
_ _
Candanbālā) and their associated rituals, we see how these narrative/ritual
complexes shape Jain thinking on wifehood. This book explores the ways that
Jain women use satı̄ narratives and rituals to understand wifehood as a choice,
which these women’s ongoing ritual practices continually shape.
My research involved participant observation of rituals associated with the
annual festivals of Paryusan, the twice-annual Āyambil Olı̄, and the Nemi
˙ _ _
Vacan on Śrāvan bright fifth as well as the rituals associated with occasional
_
or once-in-a-lifetime laywomen’s fasts and the ordinations of nuns (dı̄ksā).
˙
In domestic settings, I was able to observe a variety of practices associated with
protecting and controlling one’s wifehood and the sociopolitics of joint families.
Outside of the overtly Jain context of the above rituals, I also observed the rituals
of weddings from both the groom’s and the bride’s families’ perspectives, the
social rituals of marriage arrangements, and rituals that the Jains I observed
understood to be effective Hindu rituals. These ritual observances were coupled
with countless hours of formal interviews and informal conversations with
married women, brides, unmarried young women, and widows. My focus was
on wifehood from the perspective of wives—both prospective and actual—so my
research only occasionally extended to nuns and Jain men.
THINKING ABOUT WIFEHOOD 5
Jainism in Brief
A quick introduction to Jainism will set my discussion in its context. My

research is conducted primarily with Gujarati- and Marwari-speaking Śvetām-
bar Mūrtipūjak Jain laywomen in Pune district, Maharashtra. Jains are a minor-
ity religious community clustered primarily in western India, with a smaller
cluster in south India totaling approximately four and a quarter million people.
The 2001 Census of India returns the figure of 4,225,053 for the population of
Jains (0.4 percent of the population of India), with the highest densities in
Maharashtra (1.3 percent of the state’s population), Rajasthan (1.2 percent of
the state’s population), and Gujarat (1.0 percent of the state’s population).3
Contemporary Jains identify themselves as an urban, middle-class, mercantile
community. Jains are categorized in colonial texts, Hindu texts, and many
scholarly texts as Baniyas, a term that refers to the Rajasthani word for the
cluster of merchant castes: Baniyā (comparable to the Gujarati Vāniyā) carries
_
with it pejorative connotations of greed, miserliness, self-importance, and
weakness in Indian parlance (Babb 2004, 36, 41–42; Cort 2004, 76 n. 5); this
was not a term Jains routinely used to name themselves, though it was used
to designate a cluster of subcastes.4 Scholars usually date the religious move-
ments that are collectively called Jainism from the life of Mahāvı̄r, who was
teaching in approximately the sixth century BCE, though the historicity of
the twenty-third Jina, Pārśvanāth, is generally accepted. Jains see Mahāvı̄r as
the most recent of twenty-four enlightened teachers (hereafter, Jinas) who have
come to revitalize the Jain faith in this era. Jains describe themselves as a
fourfold community of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen. The mendicants
(monks and nuns) follow a strict regimen of asceticism, more or less modeled
on the accounts of the lives of the Jinas and other enlightened beings (siddhas)
and the instructions for mendicants—attributed to Mahāvı̄r—with the goal of
attaining total spiritual release from worldly bonds. Lay Jains are enjoined to
support the mendicant orders and to observe a set of religious duties (āvaśyaka)
that shape their religious practices.5
There are two distinct mendicant lineages, and lay devotees who are
associated with them, in Jainism: the Śvetāmbar (literally, “white-clad”), iden-
tified with southern Rajasthan, Gujarat, and the Bombay area of Maharashtra;
and the Digambar (“sky-clad”), clustered primarily in Rajasthan, southern
Maharashtra, and Karnataka. Jain sectarian identity cleaves cleanly between
these two groups; their textual and historical authorities are distinct, as
are their temples, temple practices, calendars, and social groupings.6 For our
purposes, the most significant difference between these two communities is
6 HEROIC WIVES
the position of women. Whereas Digambar Jains do not believe women are
capable of reaching enlightenment or of being full-fledged renouncers, Śve-
tāmbar Jains believe that women are eligible for renunciation, that women are
capable of reaching enlightenment as women, and therefore, that women can
serve as religious ideals and role models (in some cases for both men and
women).
Lay followers of the larger of these two groups, the Śvetāmbar, are the
focus of this study.7 Śvetāmbar Jainism is further divided into three subsects:
Mūrtipūjak, Sthānakavāsı̄, and Terāpanthı̄. The largest of these subsects, the
Mūrtipūjak Jains, worship images in temples. Sthānakavāsı̄ Jains reject image
worship and temple building; likewise, Terāpanthı̄ Jains reject image worship
and temple building but, most significant, are centered around the charismatic
authority of the founder of their lineage and its mendicant hierarchy.8 Mūrti-
pūjak Jains are further subdivided into mendicant lineages (gacch), of which
the Tapā Gacch is the dominant lineage in both numbers and, increasingly,
discourse and publications, with the Khartar Gacch following as a distant
second.9 When I speak of Jains in this study, I am referring the Śvetāmbar
Mūrtipūjak Jains, unless I specify otherwise.
Jains share in the pan-Indic concepts of karma and the transmigration of
souls, but understand the workings of karma in a unique way. Jain karma is a
material substance, which binds to the soul whenever the soul becomes sticky
with passion or other strong emotions or attachments. Karma bound to the
soul determines certain aspects of one’s present and future life conditions.
This karmic matter also prevents the soul from reaching liberation—from
rising to the top of the universe from which it cannot return to be reborn.
Much of the Jain philosophical tradition is concerned with the workings of
karma: ways to avoid its accrual and ways to destroy that karma which has
already bound with one’s soul.10 Jain philosophy has put forth an ideology
based on the goal of liberation from the cycle of rebirth (moksa mārg) and posits
˙
this as the primary goal. At the same time, Jains (including the same monks
who wrote moksa mārg ideological texts) also see well-being and auspicious-
˙
ness as central values and as the karmic result of well-practiced Jainism
(Cort 2001b).11 In the present era of spiritual decline in which Jains believe
liberation is not possible, lay Jains work toward maximizing their merit
while decreasing their sin, in hopes of both gaining a good rebirth to enjoy
and facilitating the gradual progression of one’s soul toward liberation.12
The patriarchal philosophical traditions of Śvetāmbar Jains are somewhat
ambivalent about the position of women in moksa mārg ideology. Though the
˙
scholar-monks of the dominant Tapā Gaccha have denied any prominence to
their nuns (Dundas 2007, 10), they have not gone so far as to deny women
access to liberation, and they have produced an enormous corpus of Jain satı̄
literature. Some texts suggest that women are born in women’s bodies because
of some flaw in their behavior in a past life, while others imply that women can
achieve the state of ungendered liberation. For example, the Jina Mallināth was
born in a female body because in her past life she used deception in order to
perform extra rituals (Trisasti-śalākā-purusa-caritra, 4.6.3–42); this flaw of de-
˙ ˙_ ˙
ception caused that soul to be born in a female body, but that female body did
not prevent that soul from reaching perfection.13 And yet most stories about
virtuous women take the woman’s body a priori and do not require any
explanation of its presence. When women are vilified in Jain stories, they are
represented as sexually voracious temptresses who attempt to destroy a man’s
religiosity by distracting him from austerities or his vow of celibacy (Dundas
2002, 58–59). On the other hand, one of two commonly referenced stories
about celibacy regarding men is that of the satı̄ Rājı̄matı̄ and the monk
Rathanemi (discussed in chapter 5), in which the monk is sexually tempted
by her body; she gives him a sermon focused on revulsion for her own body,
which convinces him to uphold his vow of celibacy zealously.14 Her body is
tempting; her virtue is Jain. In a similar way, Jain satı̄ narrative literature posits
women as exemplars of Jain virtue, not merely wifely virtue (Balbir 1983,
1990).15 For instance, the satı̄ Candanbālā is given as an exemplar of religious
donation in didactic literature intended to educate both men and women
(Balbir 1983, 154–155).
The enlightened and liberated beings at the center of Jain worship—the
Jinas and siddhas—were themselves renouncers, and the veneration of Jain
mendicants past and present forms an important part of Jain devotional
activity.16 Though few Jains renounce and still fewer wives do so, the pressure
to conform to liberation-directed praxis is powerful (Kelting 2001a); the rituals
of karma reduction are positioned as more efficacious and virtuous than those
acts directed toward the accumulation of merit. At the same time, pativratā
and satı̄ ideologies enjoin Jain women to perform acts and rituals in order to
protect the health of their husbands. Women, it would seem, are pulled in
opposite directions by these competing ideologies. And yet nearly all of
the texts and rituals that women use to promote their marital happiness were
created by Jain scholar-monks and mendicant leaders, such as the seventeenth-
century Tapā Gacch scholar-monk Yaśovijay or the fourteenth-century Tapā
Gacch mendicant leader Vinayacandrasūri.17 Thus, Jain wives are able to
find the tools they need to promote their marital happiness within normative
and authoritative Jain texts and practices.
Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jain worship includes much that is shared with
other South Asian traditions: temple worship, domestic worship and rites,
8 HEROIC WIVES
guru veneration, annual and monthly festivals linked to a lunar calendar,

pilgrimages, and vow taking. Jain temple worship involves making offerings
to the consecrated images, and the recitation and singing of devotional prayers
and hymns. Jains also perform formal pūjās (liturgical worship), reenacting
key narratives as worship; many of these are linked to the five auspicious dates
in the lives of each of the twenty-four Jinas (Kelting 2001b, 138–163). Unlike
Hindu worship the offerings made are not acknowledged or blessed by
the Jinas—they are not prasād or any equivalent—because as enlightened
souls the Jinas do not participate in worldly matters (Babb 1996). There are
three key holiday clusters in the Jain calendar: Paryusan (an eight-day period
˙ _
marked by increased austerities and public rites, which culminates on
Samvatsarı̄ with the annual rite of confession and expiation),18 the twice-yearly
_
Āyambil Olı̄ festival (a nine-day festival marked by women’s fasting and general
_
austerity),19 and Dı̄vālı̄ (a cluster of observances, which for Jains mark the new
year, well-being, and the hopes for success in key areas of well-being—wealth,
health, domestic tranquillity, and knowledge).20
In order to decrease karma and to maximize good karma, Jains, especially
Jain women, perform vows and most particularly vows to fast. Jains are virtuosi
in fasting, with an enormous variety of fasts for followers to choose from. Fasts
are not universally required, though some kind of partial fast on Samvatsarı̄
_
Day is required for those who participate in the nearly universally performed
annual rite of confession and expiation. A few fasts (most significantly the
Āyambil Olı̄ fast) were so widely performed by married laywomen that
_
they seemed to gain a status making their performance an expectation. Other
fasts (the Rohinı̄, Saubhāgya Pañcamı̄, Aksaynidhi, and Candanbālā fasts)
_ ˙
were commonly recommended for laywomen by other laywomen and by Jain
mendicants, but were in no way universal. The longer fasts are marked by
a fast-breaking ritual in which the public is called upon to felicitate those who
have completed the fast, illustrating the importance of heroic fasting in the
public discourse of Jainism. Public pūjās and fasting are embodied rituals,
which shape Jain discourse on wifehood, and both will be discussed at length
in the chapters to follow.
Siting the Study
This book arose out of fifteen years of research with Gujarati and Marwari
Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jain laywomen, primarily in Pune district in Maharash-
tra. These Mūrtipūjak Jains usually aligned themselves with the mendicant
tradition of the Tapā Gacch and deemed their texts and mendicants to be
authoritative, though some lay Jains in the community aligned themselves

with the Khartar Gacch, even if they relied Tapā Gacch texts in shared ritual
contexts. My research subjects included both young women raised in Pune and
soon to be married, and women married to men in Pune who were raised in
Pune, Mumbai, many villages and small cities around Maharashtra, and also
some women raised in Rajasthan and Gujarat. I was able to speak with
occasional women married to men in Gujarat and Rajasthan, but this was
the exception. Because of the slight hypergamy practices in Jain marriage
arrangements (not nearly as pronounced as that found in Hindu contexts),
the flow of brides was generally toward urban centers and the more prosperous
areas of Maharashtra.21 I spoke regularly with a number of widows, several of
whom I had known as wives before their husbands died.
The community where my research is focused is a mix of Gujarati and
Marwari Jains; middle-class Gujaratis represent approximately three-quarters
of the congregation and upper-middle- and upper-class Marwaris representing
nearly a quarter. These two groups do not mix socially except at religious
events; even then, the men rarely mingle together. For women in these two
groups, there are differences in social practices, which divide these women
socially; in particular, social restraints determine with whom and when women
can visit socially. This difference in mobility was often the basis for pejorative
generalizations about women in the opposite group—comments based in the
relative freedom of Gujarati women to visit each other around the neighbor-
hood while running errands, contrasted with the expectation that Marwari
women would stay home and not run errands or go visiting. Within the context
of the women’s singing collective (mandal) and the performance of communal
__ _
rituals, Gujaratis and Marwari women mixed freely, and some close friend-
ships were made; certainly women who had become friends attended key rites
(engagements, weddings, funerals) held in each others’ houses.
These two groups both engage deeply with satı̄ discourse, though it was
more often in conversations with Marwari women that they spoke of satı̄mātā
veneration. The women mostly spoke Gujarati or Marwari, though there
were several who spoke standard Hindi and Marathi. Though there were
some women who could speak English, they rarely spoke English with me,
preferring, it seemed, to speak of intimate matters in their mother tongue. In
addition, many conversations included more than one woman, and it was
rare that more than one woman could speak English; in a mixed context, to
use English would have seemed rude and exclusionary.
At Jain public events, the divisions in this community were partially
subordinated to their shared identity of being Jains living in the heart of
Marathi-speaking Hindu Maharashtra; Jains from both ethnic groups attended
10 HEROIC WIVES
Jain ordinations, parades, and all-Pune Jain events together, though in the
Mahāvı̄r Jayantı̄ parade in downtown Pune, each group had signs identifying
their floats by ethnicity and sect.
The Jains with whom I worked mostly identified themselves as middle
class. Jain social practices reflect Indian middle-class and middle-caste values
of hard work, vegetarianism, abstinence, frugality, female modesty, and careful
maintenance of social position (Babb 2004, 13–65, 217–233; Cort 2004; Cottom
Ellis 1991; Reynell 1985a). For example, although Jains participate in the status
game of public consumer goods, their households were usually maintained
according to a frugality expected of their community, and they often referred
to frugality explicitly as a virtue. They lived in a variety of kinds of homes from
small, old-fashioned one- or two-room homes on the ground level to multiple-
room apartments in new apartment buildings. Some, but not many—due in
part to the contingencies of urban life—lived in freestanding bungalows; in
this community, even those with enough money often opted for penthouse
apartments in town or urban or semiurban housing societies rather than
suburban bungalows. The families aspired to English-medium education—
and most were able to arrange this—though few of the parents and fewer still
of the grandparents spoke any English. Virtually all the families had cell
phones, motor scooters, refrigerators, televisions, and the other markers of
middle-class consumption, but only a few had cars. Virtually all children (men
and women) were expected to go to college, though only some of their fathers
had finished college, and very few of their mothers had completed even one
year of college. On the other hand, a surprising number of elderly women had
at least functional literacy. In sum, this community was one bent on moving
rapidly up the economic scale, with aspirations to new Indian middle-class
consumption patterns, and was simultaneously committed to maintaining
a long-standing claim to middle-class morality and social conservatism.
Research on Wifehood and Privacy

There are particular challenges to writing about material as personal and
sensitive as that involving marital happiness and discord, which determine
the ways in which I am able to present individual testimony and statements in
this book, while protecting the privacy of those women who shared their lives
and thoughts with me. In my first book, Singing to the Jinas (Kelting 2001b),
the women I worked with were adamant about my using their real names. (The
project also required specificity about social position to make its arguments
about individual women’s religious practices.) However, the fears about and
bad experiences of marriage are so powerfully stigmatized and silenced that it
was only in very intimate settings that women broached these topics, and then
only with assurances that the speaker would not be identifiable. Even the joys
of marriage were usually only expressed in private conversation, because of the
social restrictions about displaying affection or intimacy with one’s husband
in public, in front of any men, in front of elders, or in front of affinal relatives.
Necessarily, this book must exclude extensive personal detail, both to protect
privacy and because some discussions depended on second-hand accounts;
sometimes names went unmentioned at the time. Further, any discussions
related to young women who are still unmarried or newly married required my
specific vigilance in protecting privacy because of the particular vulnerability of
these women. This project relies on many intimate conversations I have had
over the last fifteen years with Jain women in the privacy of late nights, riksha
and bus rides, and mid-morning kitchens. The seriousness of their assump-
tions of privacy necessitates full anonymity for most discussions. While the
women all knew I was working on a book on wifehood (and nearly all had seen
my first book), and these narratives and often these disclosures happened
in the context of conversations associated with my project, they still assumed
(and rightly) that I would protect their identities.
On the other hand, much of the conversation surrounding rituals and
the stories themselves were part of public discourse and happened in group
settings associated with the rituals or the tellings of narratives. I separate
discussions about marital concerns from my discussions of rituals, where the
participants might be identifiable within their community by virtue of
the public nature of the rituals. This also means that I cannot give complete
details about the context of the women’s disclosures, because those details
could potentially identify individual women. My goal is to create a balance
between a description that is recognizably real without being recognizable as
that of a particular individual. From time to time, protecting women’s privacy
is necessarily my priority; some episodes or conversations are obscured or
excluded from the discussion altogether.
Jain Satı̄ Narratives
This study clusters around the corpus of eight well-known Jain satı̄ narratives.
I recorded the narratives in this book in formal ritual contexts, informal
retellings of the stories, and from printed versions of these stories that
women handed me and told me to read. The narratives associated with rituals
(Rohinı̄, Maynāsundarı̄, Rājul, and Candanbālā) were told and read in ritual
_ _
contexts and occasionally in informal contexts. Some stories (Sulasā, Subha-
12 HEROIC WIVES
drā, Añjanā, and Brahmı̄-Sundarı̄) had no ritual context for their telling, which
indicated that they were retold for their meaning rather than to fulfill a ritual
obligation. The contexts of informal oral tellings often occurred when I or
someone else mentioned a particular kind of problem; for example, on several
occasions when I asked about whether it is hard to adjust to a new religious
climate in one’s marital home, I was told the story of Subhadrā. The story
allowed the women to tell me that it can be difficult, without transgressing the
mandated silence about marital unhappiness. The stories of Maynāsundarı̄
_
and Rājul are told as part of the rituals associated with those narratives as well
as in sermons, informal tellings, and in many publications; they were also told
outside of the ritual context of the fasts, during the seasons or days associated
with the rituals. Rohinı̄’s story is usually told during the rituals associated with
_
the Rohinı̄ fast, but it is not a requirement of it; that said, the story was a
_
popular one in informal tellings. On the other hand, it is the performance of
the rituals associated with Candanbālā rather than an oral or written version
that dominated women’s knowledge of that story. I have also been given audio
cassette tapes and video CDs in much the same way that I have been given
printed versions, either as response to my general interest in satı̄s, or as
particular responses to queries about particular stories.
There are many satı̄ stories that are not included in this volume. The
choices of what to include were made in light of the links between particular
stories and Jain women’s discourse on wifehood: a story could be linked to a
ritual associated with wives, arise in conversations I had with laywomen related
to wifehood, or be named as indispensable for understanding wifehood.22
Women—including nuns—did not tell me stories that centered around the
experience of nunhood, and other stories were told in the context of discus-
sions unrelated to wifehood (for example, the story of Mrgāvatı̄ was told to
_
me to illustrate the nature of omniscience), and therefore were not relevant
to this discussion. Still others were recorded in written form but not referenced
by any woman in conversation or performance. For the purposes of this book
and because women did draw my attention wifely narratives in their tellings,
the discussion will center on the stories of wifehood. This collage of tellings
of these stories in my research reflected the ways that women learn and
tell stories in this community. A combination of formal recitations, perfor-
mances, informal tellings, printed text, and visual representations weave the
fabric of Jain discourse on satı̄s. In addition to these performances of narrative
recitation, satı̄ stories are told in hymns that are embedded in the Jain rituals of
daily worship (caityavandan), devotional singing (bhāvanā), and confession
(pratikraman). There are also occasional performances of the stories as the
_
lay Jain communities dramatically reenact them as religious entertainment or,
as in the story of Candanbālā, as a required part of a fast-breaking ritual.

Finally, some satı̄ stories are represented visually in temples, Jain decorative
arts, ritual drama, and dance. These images, though rarely narrative, teach the
viewer normative understandings about the key moments in the story and how
to interpret them. Even when women create these images, it is often under the
watchful eye of others, who then judge the creation based on its conformity to
normative representations.
Printed versions of these stories abound. There are both collections of satı̄
narratives and individual volumes dedicated to particular satı̄s. Rituals often
prescribe the study of the satı̄ narrative associated with the ritual, but other satı̄
narratives are read out of one’s own piety and interest. Older women read these
books during the afternoon or evening rather than watching television. I found
that young women who had completed their schooling and who were passing
time until they were married were often given these books to read by their elder
female relatives; surely the intentions were to educate their daughters in
the expectations of wifehood, to remind them of the dire results of transgres-
sive behavior, and also to give them something to do that might be entertaining
and more worthwhile than watching soap operas. The more religious young
women often had read a number of these books, while the less religious
ignored them. Married women had less time to read for pleasure, but those
who did and who read with facility would read these books along with other
religious books. During my research women have often shown, lent, and
given me many satı̄ narratives in individual volumes, ritual texts, and satı̄
narrative collections. Those satı̄ narratives which are included in the collections
and individual volumes become a kind of “greatest hits” list of satı̄ narratives.
Though women may be able to name other satı̄s whose stories were not
included in these popular forms, these stories were far less well known, were
rarely named without coaxing, and were difficult for most women to recall well
enough to tell the story.
Though I occasionally reference early canonical texts such as the Kalpa
Sūtra and the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra, the texts that provide the foundation for
this study are mostly from the medieval and modern periods, spanning the
twelfth to twenty-first centuries. The medieval satı̄ literature used for this
study includes puranic-style compendia such as Hemacandra’s twelfth-century
Trisasti-śalākā-purusa-caritra; epic poetry such as Vinayvijay and Yaśovijay’s
˙ ˙_ ˙
seventeenth-century Śrı̄pāl Rājā no Rāsa; lyric poetry in the phāgu and bārah
māsā poetic genres, such as Vinayacandrasūri’s early-fourteenth-century poem,
Rājal-Bārahmāsā; and praise hymns (sajjhāys) written in the sixteenth
to eighteenth centuries, such as the Maynāsundarı̄ Sajjhāy, the Rājı̄matı̄-satı̄
_
Sajjhāy, and the Candanbālā Sajjhāy. I also include hard-to-date agglomerative
14 HEROIC WIVES
texts like pūjā liturgies and instructions, fasting instructions, sermon collec-
tions, and the rite of confession and expiation (pratikraman). From the modern
_
and contemporary periods, I discuss devotional narrative poetry such as
Devcand’s nineteenth-century Nemanāthno Saloko, hymns (stavan), fasting
songs (tapasya gı̄t), veil songs (cundadı̄ gı̄t), satı̄ story collections, novel-like
_
settings of individual stories, and dramatic renditions. Nearly all the Jain
religious texts cited in this book were written by Jain monks—many of them
quite prominent—suggesting that the questions that bear on laywomen about
pativratā, saubhāgya, renunciation, and Jain satı̄s were of great concern to
mendicants, who clearly did not see them in opposition to Jain religious
values.23
The rationale behind my inclusion of this wide array of texts and their
great variety of presentation stems from the creative integration of these texts
in the religious practices and experiences of the laywomen with whom
I worked. With few exceptions (notably in the historical discussion in chapter
5), I was directed to each of these texts by Jain laywomen themselves. Some of
the texts included are among the most beloved of Jain texts (Śrı̄pāl Rājā no
Rāsa, Nemanāthno Saloko); they were named, performed, and referenced
time and again during my study. Others, less commonly performed, are
included because of the particular contexts in which they were referenced.
The genres included work together in some characteristic ways. For example,
sajjhāys are performed as part of the confession liturgy, while stavan were
performed in pūjā liturgies. Fasting songs were embedded in the narrative
recitations, mendicant sermons, and dramatic reenactments that occur during
major fasts. Many of the prose retellings of these stories were read, studied,
and shared both during the time of the fasts associated with them or whenever
women had time to read for themselves.
Ideologies of Wifehood
To understand the ways that Jain satı̄ narratives shape Jain discourse on
wifehood, it will be helpful to begin by framing the ideologies of dedicated
wives (pativratā), auspicious wifehood (saubhāgya), virtuous women (satı̄ ), and
renunciation (moksa mārg). When I refer to these discursive arenas as ideolo-
˙
gies, I do so after Bourdieu’s understanding; in analyzing the way that public
discourse becomes ideology, he explains: “Official language, particularly
the system of concepts by means of which the members of a given group
provide themselves with a representation of their social relations (e.g. the
lineage model or the vocabulary of honour), sanctions and imposes what it
states, tacitly laying down the dividing line between the thinkable and the
unthinkable, thereby contributing to the symbolic order from which it
draws its authority” (Bourdieu 1977, 21). The discourse on wifehood thus
becomes ideology as it defines what is and is not thinkable about or by wives
or those women whose identities are conflated with wifehood. Ideology is an
instrument of domination used to control which cultural performances
are legitimate; those acts which are in accordance with an ideology are
recognized as legitimate, while those acts which disrupt an ideology are
deemed inauthentic or other, or are not even recognized as acts. Bourdieu
(1991, 163–170) criticizes the Marxist reduction of ideological power to that
power which serves the particular interests of those who control the instru-
ments of ideology; Bourdieu argues that ideologies must also share in the
special characteristics of the performances of that ideology by those who
are nonelites. The hegemony of these discourses is organized and intentional,
and reified through the habitual bodily practices of everyday life and women’s
ritual engagement.
To begin, a brief description of Jain marriage practices is needed. Jains
conform to the pan-South Asian practice of marriages arranged by the elder
relatives (usually parents and uncles) of the bride and groom. This expectation
is powerful enough that the stigma of “love marriages” in a family can attach to
even fairly distant relatives, marring their marriage arrangement opportu-
nities. When there are “love marriages” in a family, every attempt is made,
after the fact, to discursively frame the marriage as arranged, in order to
maintain a family’s reputation. In my observation, marriage arrangements
begin at the time when a woman has completed her schooling (nowadays,
college) and when a man has settled himself in a job or business. Marriage
arrangements are slightly hypergamous in class and usually lateral in caste,
but extreme hypergamy is socially discouraged and diminishes the likelihood
of mutual business relations; older Jain men, when speaking of arranging
marriages within their families, often told me they liked marriages to be
barābar (equal), and they gestured to make a balance scale with their hands.
Jains do not perform specifically Jain rites of marriage; their weddings resem-
ble the weddings of those Hindus who share their ethnicity, caste, and
class identities.24 After marriage, the new bride is expected to move into her
husband’s family’s house and to accept her position as a subordinate to her
elder affinal relatives (husband, mother-in-law, wives of elder brothers-in-law,
etc.). The patrifocal joint family is still held up as the ideal, despite the recent
demographic changes toward more nuclear-family housing and fewer joint
families. Finally, once married, a woman is expected to conform—at least
publicly—to the ideology of pativratā.
16 HEROIC WIVES
Pativratā
Jains and Hindus of western India share much of the discourse of the
dedicated wife (pativratā) who dedicates herself to her husband completely.
Scholars have written much about pativratā ideologies within the Hindu
traditions.25 The Laws of Manu (V, 154) tell us: “Though destitute of virtue,
or seeking pleasure [elsewhere], or devoid of good qualities, [yet] a husband
must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife.” In Leslie’s
translation of the Strı̄dharmapaddhati, an eighteenth-century work on the
duties of women, we find a similar summary description: “Obedient service
to one’s husband (bhartrśuśrūsanam) is the primary religious duty enjoined by
_ ˙ _
sacred tradition for women” (Leslie 1989, 29). In Hindu discourse, pativratā
practice is sometimes expressed as the duty of wives to worship their hus-
bands as gods; an extreme instance of this degree of subservience is the ritual
of drinking the water used to bathe a husband’s feet in Nepal (Ahearn 2001,
23; Bennett 1983, 174–175).26 In any case, a pativratā is enjoined to perform a
variety of acts of deference intended to mark her position as subordinate to
her husband and his lineage, and are understood as evidence of her status as
a pativratā.
It is considered most important that a pativratā be completely faithful to her
husband sexually and produce sons by her husband for the benefit of her
husband’s lineage.27 This expectation spans the entire life span of a woman;
a woman should have no other romantic involvement before, during, or after her
marriage. Before marriage, young women are expected to remain celibate and
have no entanglements with men. Even mere speculation about premarital
involvement with men can destroy a woman’s marriage prospects. During mar-
riage, not only should a woman maintain absolute sexual fidelity but there is
also an expectation of complete emotional fidelity, which includes not being
emotionally intimate with any other men, not being seen with men outside
the family, and not speaking badly about one’s husband. This fidelity is extended
beyond a husband’s death, for widows. Although according to Jain legal texts
Jain widows can remarry, virtually all the women I interviewed were horrified by
the thought of remarriage, and most said that a good woman would never
remarry.
The more subtle aspects of wifely fidelity are focused on displaying defer-
ence not only to her husband, but also to his relatives, most importantly his
parents and elder brothers. This deference is often symbolized by a set of
_
actions: covering her hair or face with the end of a sari (ghūngha t), not addres-
_
sing people directly or using their given names (it is expected that she use
kinship terms), sitting on a surface that is lower than her in-laws, eating after
(and less than) her in-laws, massaging the legs of her mother-in-law and
husband, and accepting the judgments and demands of her in-laws uncom-
plainingly. These ideals of behavior are selectively performed and complexly
signified, and not all rules are held to be of equal importance. In my observa-
tion, hair covering ranged from pulling a sari down to cover the entire face
when a father-in-law enters a room to a barely noticeable gesture at straighten-
ing a sari that is not covering any of the hair. What seems to matter more
than the actual coverage of hair is the gesture that acknowledges this ideal. In
general, Gujarati and Marwari Jains differ in the degree and form of their
performance of ghūngha_ t and other deference practices; Marwari women are
_
more likely to veil in front of senior women, and physically lower themselves
when men are present. On the other hand, the injunction against using given
names is nearly universal in my experience—in part, because it links with
the more general practice of name avoidance. Other rules become weaker as
the daughter-in-law ages and becomes a more important part of the decision-
making process. When a daughter-in-law becomes a mother-in-law herself, she
becomes an object of deference, making her status more similar to that of
her own mother-in-law. Finally, while the ideal of accepting judgments and
decisions uncomplainingly is manifest in the public spaces of the home, these
same women may complain bitterly about decisions in the context of their
natal homes, in private conversation with their husband and children, and
may through nonverbal communication demonstrate their unhappiness.
There are, of course, those who vocalize their complaints directly, but they
are often framed as bad wives and daughters-in-law.28 This rule, too, is selec-
tively invoked, in my observation, as older daughters-in-law become more
vocal over time, or in cases where the daughter-in-law is on good terms with
her mother-in-law, or when the daughter-in-law is seen as an expert on a
particular topic.
The Jain satı̄ narratives support this model of wifely fidelity. The complete
fidelity of married satı̄s to their husbands and the sexual purity of all satı̄s,
married or unmarried, is a frequently repeated motif in satı̄ narratives.29
In addition to this idealization of sexual control, Jain satı̄ narratives are invoked
by Jain laywomen to support them in a variety of virtuous acts. Similar to satı̄
narratives, for Jain women, a pativratā performs the expected labor (both
physical and spiritual) of wives, including keeping a Jain home, maintaining
Jain food restrictions, producing sons, offering hospitality, feeding monks,
performing and sponsoring pūjās, teaching Jainism to husbands and children,
providing religious patronage, performing public acts of religious piety (such
as fasting), and serving as a moral compass for the family. These acts are part of
being a dedicated wife, because they are expressly understood to benefit the
18 HEROIC WIVES
husband’s lineage. Among the acts that good wives perform, fasting for the
protection of their husbands is a practice shared with Hindu women. The
models for these saubhāgya fasts, however, are drawn from the Jain satı̄
tradition. One of the principle functions of Jain satı̄ narratives is to contribute
to a discourse of wifehood, which addresses the concerns of Jain laywomen
within the Jain value system and provides a fertile context in which Jain women
can explore their questions of virtue and piety.
Saubhāgya
Jains, like Hindus, understand the auspicious—or literally, fortunate—woman
(saubhāgyavatı̄ ) to be a wife whose husband is alive. In a Jain context, the state
of auspicious wifehood is contrasted with both widowhood and the status of
the Jain nun. Though Jain nuns are not inauspicious or unfortunate, the term
saubhāgyavati would never refer to them because saubhāgya is explicitly under-
stood to be the good fortune of auspicious wifehood. Much of the saubhāgya
discourse is focused on maintaining a husband’s good health and long life
through wifely piety. One important indicator of wifely virtue, then, is that of
dying before one’s husband. In the Hindu discourse in the regions from which
these Jain caste clusters come, the rite of dying with one’s husband on his
funeral pyre (becoming a satı̄)—discussed below—is understood to be a rare
but powerful corrective for error and the misfortune of outliving one’s hus-
band. For Jain wives, the rite of dying with one’s husband is not even a
rhetorical possibility, because of the violence inherent to the act, so the dis-
course on auspicious wifehood (saubhāgya) centers around miraculous meth-
ods of preventing widowhood.
To be an auspicious wife implies both status and power: the status of
auspiciousness and the power to bless, even in—perhaps especially in—
death; these benefits were named by Jain women as reasons for preventing
widowhood. In the middle of a discussion about wedding jewelry (on 5 January
2002), one Jain woman explained that if a wife dies before her husband, she is
cremated with her wedding veil and her ivory armbands. She then excitedly
described a funeral of a daughter-in-law in her natal home who was dressed as
a saubhāgyavati for her cremation. The deceased was laid out in her wedding
sari and veil including the beaded headband, and ivory armbands. After she
died, henna designs were drawn on her hands and red powder (kunku _ m)
_
marked on her forehead. She was dressed, in other words, as a bride. Each
married woman circumambulated the corpse and took a bit of red powder from
off the deceased woman’ forehead to bless their own status as saubhāgyavatı̄s.
She ended by saying: “This is the kind of funeral I want . . . a proper one.
A widow cannot have a funeral like this.” In her description of the funeral of
a saubhāgyavati, we see the veneration of her by other wives and the implied
potential of that deceased wife to bless the wifehood of her relatives. By dying
before her husband, the saubhāgyavati is proven to be a powerful protector,
extending her protection beyond her husband to all her kin.
The ideologies of pativratā and saubhāgya create a crisis for those wives
who are widowed, which can be resolved either through austerity or, rarely (and
prohibited for Jains), one’s death as a satı̄. Jain widows are inauspicious in
certain social contexts, but that inauspiciousness does not extend to specifically
Jain rituals. For example, Jain widows can perform all fundamental aspects
of Jain worship and practice; there are no restrictions against temple worship,
fasting, feeding monks, study and recitation of texts, donation, or taking
ordination. On the other hand, Jain widows are restricted from performing
the auspicious and protective rites associated with weddings and pregnancies;
they cannot sing auspicious songs, give their daughters away (kanyā dān) as
part of the marriage, or bless new brides at the entrance to the house.30 There
are a number of Jain rituals, which require (or, at least, recommend) that they
be performed by a married couple; widows would not be able to perform these,
but neither would widowers or unmarried men and women.31 These restric-
tions seem to be more about the auspiciousness and power of Jain married
couples as ideal patrons of Jainism than about the exclusion of widows
in particular, especially since there is nothing remotely inauspicious about
the unmarried men and women who are likewise excluded. When a husband
dies, a Jain widow removes the signs of auspicious wifehood—marriage neck-
_
lace (mangal sutta), glass bangles, toe rings, anklets, and the red forehead
mark—and stops wearing saris in auspicious colors or patterns. Although
middle-aged widows sometimes wore patterned saris, albeit in more subdued
colors, elderly widows tended to wear white saris; few widows still wear the
more traditional maroon Gujarati widow’s saris. The transformation from a
giver of blessings and the locus of auspiciousness to an inauspicious widow
can be traumatic for a woman who has focused her piety and identity around
being an auspicious wife.
Since Jain families, like most South Asian families, center around the
male lineage, and since in these families the financial well-being and social
protections of the family are in the hands of that male lineage, women rely on
husbands (and later sons) to provide their basic economic needs. A widow
is financially and sociopolitically vulnerable, because as a widow, she no longer
has a husband to provide for her and to intercede on her behalf. Those widows
20 HEROIC WIVES
with sons often remain powerful figures as mothers consulted on all familial
decisions and most major financial decisions. Widows without children are
dependent on the good will and affection of their affinal relatives. In a commu-
nity where women are discouraged from working outside the home and where
even for working women the expectation is that their primary role is that
of wife and mother, the loss of a husband entails, beyond the emotional
trauma and grief, a real crisis of socio-economic security. Among middle-
class Jains—especially those who remain in joint families—widows rarely
experience crippling poverty; rather, what they experience is a sense of vulner-
ability and partial loss of identity. Unless they have adult sons, they must rely
on the system of the joint family and the generosity of male relatives (both in
their marital and natal homes) whose primary obligations lie elsewhere—with
their own parents, wives, and children.
The social experience of Jain widows is less austere than that of upper-
caste Hindu widows as described by scholars.32 Because of Jain identity with
middle-class mores and the importance of prestige, and because most Jains
have sufficient resources to take care of family members, it is rare to see
a widow who is obviously abused or neglected. To have a family widow
appear in public in ragged clothing or malnourished is shameful and will
certainly lead to the community’s suspicion about the family. Not allowing
a family widow access to religious events (a strategy that could be used to
hide abuse from the public eye) is suspect, as well, and could lead to the
kinds of gossip and speculation that hurt family prestige and standing.33
Therefore, although Jain widows certainly experience worries about their
uncertain future and sorrow at the loss of their status as auspicious wives
with all its blessings and clear directives, the widows I have observed in the
many families I have interacted with appear to be taken care of reasonably
well and do not suffer the severe deprivations described in other studies of
Indian widows.
For reasons of both socioeconomic stability and the sense of well-
being that arises out of a woman’s identity as an auspicious wife, Jain lay-
women devote substantial ritual labor to the protection of their saubhāgya.
For Jains, the auspicious wife is the wife whose focus on her husband and
his family leads to a general sense of moral virtue and good fortune. Jains
credit the experience of saubhāgya to the well-lived moral life. The rites of
saubhāgya protect both a woman’s auspiciousness and also her status as a
virtuous person. The exemplars of wifely virtue for Jains (as well as Hindus)
are called satı̄s. For obvious reasons, I must address this morally and politically
charged term.
Satı̄, Suttee, and the Discourse of Virtue
Jains have embraced the discourse of satı̄ wholeheartedly, so that nearly all
virtuous women in Jain religious literature are referred to as satı̄s.34 For the
most part, however, Jains use the term satı̄ naively; that is to say, the term satı̄ is
used without reference—positively or negatively—to the evocative potency it
has accrued in feminist, nationalist, or sociopolitical disputes. Being ethnically
identified with the communities in which Hindu satı̄mātās have been most
widely venerated, Jains are not only not ignorant of Hindu satı̄mātās who die
on their husband’s funeral pyres but are also acutely aware of the multivalent
implications of the use of this term. However, the Jain rejection of that rite
is linked to Jain notions of nonviolence and equanimity, rather than questions
of politics, ethnic identity, or human or women’s rights.35 Jains define satı̄s in
ways that invoke shared ideals with Hindu satı̄mātā ideologies about women’s
fidelity and moral strength, while explicitly rejecting any notions of bodily self-
sacrifice. Significantly, Jain satı̄s do not take the vow to fast to death (samthāra
_
or samadhı̄-maran) when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstructions to
_
their religious practices.36 Instead, Jain satı̄s perform rituals that remove these
obstacles. The Jain satı̄s embrace austerities for their own benefit and for
the benefit of others, but do so with the expectation that ultimately these
austerities will work toward their own liberation.
In order to clarify Jain uses of the term satı̄, it is necessary to establish a
context of Hindu uses of the term and of scholarly discourse about satı̄s and
suttees. To enter into any discussion of satı̄, suttees, and virtue we must begin
with some clarification of how the terms have been used. Satı̄ literally means a
“true or virtuous woman.” British writers understood suttee to refer to
the ritualized act of widow immolation among Hindus.37 In a Hindu context,
however, this rite is referred to as “becoming a satı̄” (satı̄ honā), “dying with
[one’s deceased husband]” (sahamarana), or “going with [one’s deceased hus-
_
band]” (sahagamana).38 In this context, the term satı̄ does not refer to the rite of
dying itself, but rather to the woman performing the rite; a satı̄ is a woman
in whom sat has arisen. The category of satı̄s includes any number of
women whose virtues are understood to arise out of their gendered subject
position as wives, not only out of dying with one’s husband.39 Sunder Rajan
(1993a) argues—in the context of the British/Hindu dyad of satı̄ discourse—
that the discourse of satı̄s as wives who burn obscures the complexity of satı̄
discourse: “My argument that the identity of the ‘good wife’ (satı̄ in the original
sense) is a broader framework for female subjectification than that of the
22 HEROIC WIVES
widow who burns (satı̄ according to later usage) is based on the observation
that good wifehood has different manifestations, and some of these included
the option of life rather than death” (Sunder Rajan 1993b, 303). In the Hindu
context there are three prominent satı̄s—Satı̄, Savitrı̄, and Sı̄tā—who did not
die with their husbands.40 Likewise, Sunder Rajan (1993b, 301) draws our
attention to the wives of the father of Rām, the great king, Daśaratha, who all
continue to live honorably after his death. These counterexamples serve to
remind the reader that the term satı̄ has a multivalence that we too often
overlook. Sangari and Vaid (1996, 280) argue that satı̄ must still be understood
as an event. On one hand, I agree that from a feminist perspective, which seeks
to eradicate this form of death, the act is central to the discourse. However,
in order to see how satı̄ functions in the wider usage, the term must be
understood to denote a virtuous woman and not the particulars of her acts.
On the other hand, a satı̄mātā is virtually always a woman who has died
on their husband’s funeral pyre.41 Making the discussion more complex,
however, a woman who fully intended to die in this manner but was some-
how prevented may also be called a satı̄mātā.42 Satı̄mātās become goddesses
who look after their husbands’ lineages (and sometimes their local commu-
nities). In some cases, such as Rānı̄ Satı̄ in Jhunjhunu, who is worshiped by
Marwari Agarwal merchants, the satı̄mātā becomes a lineage goddess for an
entire community (Hardgrove 2004, 248–253). The conversion of a virtuous
woman into an agent of protection for the family is intimately tied
to the performance (or at least the intended performance) of the rite of
dying with one’s husband. Although Hindus blur the strict line between
satı̄s and satı̄mātās that I am proposing here, the distinction between a satı̄
and a satı̄mātā is one with which Jains were quite familiar and a distinction
they were careful to maintain. Jain satı̄s, because they never immolate them-
selves, are never satı̄mātās. But a satı̄mātā is always a satı̄, and the blurring
even of these categories serves to illuminate the ways in which satı̄s
are understood to be virtuous women of many sorts.
There has been much written about “suttees,” satı̄, and satı̄mātās both in
the British colonial period and in the postcolonial period. There are some early
descriptions of the rite of a Hindu woman immolating herself on her hus-
band’s funeral pyre (Major 2007, 3–26), but the preoccupation with the satı̄
seems to arise in the early modern period and flourish in the colonial
era (Major 2007). In her study of British and indigenous elite official discourse
on satı̄ in Bengal, Mani (1998) argues that discursive engagement with the
practice of widow immolation centered around colonial control—especially
over Hindu religious space—notions of the barbaric East, and the civilizing
influence of British rule. Major (2006) expands the texts included in her study
beyond official British government documents to include representations

in the popular literature and press; her study reconfigures the relationship
between British writings on satı̄ and British identity, suggesting that British
discourse about satı̄ was intimately linked to Britain’s preoccupations with
the sociopolitical roles of its own women, society, and identity.43 Both Mani
and Major both draw our attention to the construction of the satı̄ as object,
rather than a subject in British discourse about satı̄s.
Feminist scholars writing about satı̄ have focused on the brutal violence of
the death of a satı̄, the ideologies that justify this death, and the ways in
which the death of a satı̄ is represented as voluntary, painless, glorious,
and linked to timeless notions of Hindu religiosity.44 Indian feminists, partic-
ularly after the 1987 immolation of Roop Kanwar, specifically attacked the
colonial preoccupation with whether an individual satı̄ was voluntary or
not, because this questions elides the coercive effects of satı̄ discourse; notions
of voluntary/authentic versus forced/inauthentic satı̄ ignore the socioeconom-
ic pressures and the power of hegemonic discourse to shape the acts of
these women and their relatives. They argue for a model of structural violence,
because of the stigma and austerities that attach to those women who become
widows; the glorification of those women who die this kind of death, they
argue further, delineates a choice whose only possible outcomes are bodily and
psychological suffering. Sunder Rajan (1993) analyzes representations of
satı̄s, and argues that the ways these images deny pain in the satı̄ death
likewise deny subjectivity to the woman dying. Spivak (1985) draws our atten-
tion to the selective granting of agency, which allows a woman to be an
agent only when she dies as a satı̄. Similarly, Sunder Rajan (1993, 306) points
out the ways in which the satı̄ is only granted a subjectivity after her death;
here it is not only choice, which is granted in death, but the very idea of
selfhood.
Compounding this issue, the new antisatı̄ laws grant a strange kind of
agency to the women who attempt to die as satı̄s: if a woman intending to die as
a satı̄ changes her mind, she can now be charged as the primary criminal in an
attempted satı̄ case (Oldenburg 1994b, 104, 124–126). Kishwar and Vanita
(1987) argue that the characterization of Roop Kanwar’s satı̄ as a religious
rite turned a human rights/women’s rights issue into a debate between “tradi-
tion” and “modernity,” erasing the complexity of Indian engagements with this
practice.45 Sangari and Vaid (1996) argue that the continued practice of satı̄,
its links to nationalist discourse, and the sociopolitical benefits of satı̄ venera-
tion lie at a nexus of Brahmin, Rajput, and Baniya political interests.46 For
feminist scholars, the pressing concern is the successful obliteration of the
practice of widow immolation; these studies are understandably not focused on
24 HEROIC WIVES
understanding the profound attachment to satı̄mātās and satı̄ discourse felt

by those who support it.
Among religious studies scholars, there have been few descriptions of
satı̄mātā veneration and the ways that the powerful discourse of satı̄ is repro-
duced among Hindu women through this veneration, but a few scholars have
sought to identify why satı̄mātās are powerful figures for the women who
worship them. These religious studies scholars have drawn most of their
material about satı̄ discourse from western Indian satı̄mātā veneration prac-
tices and visual culture. The death of a satı̄ transforms her into a satı̄mātā,
a maternal protector of the male lineage of those whom she blesses and those
who venerate her. Harlan’s work (1992, 138–139, 180–181, and 1994) on satı̄-
mātās both delineates the stages of the transformation from wife to satı̄mātā
(pativratā, satı̄vratā, satı̄mātā) and provides a framework for understanding the
terms of satı̄mātā worship by linking them to the protection of a male lineage
and to a woman’s saubhāgya. Though ideas of the satı̄’s curse (śrāp) are invoked
in satı̄ accounts as evidence of voluntary choice (Harlan 1992, 139–146, and
1994, 86–88), they are also recounted as something to be feared. Protective
restrictions (ok) that satı̄s pronounce change religious and social practices
among the families to whom they were granted and are a mark of the satı̄mā-
tā’s continued blessing (Harlan 1992, 146–156, and 1994). Satı̄mātā veneration
is embedded in the singing cycles performed in association with life-cycle rites
in Rajasthani homes (Harlan 1992, 47, 137; 1995b, and 2007; Weinberger-
Thomas 2000, 111–112). As in the singing cycles, satı̄s are invoked in domestic
and temple worship to protect a family’s lineage at rites of passage and times of
crisis. Weinberger-Thomas (2000, 169–173) describes the worship of the
satı̄mātā, Om Kanwar, performed to commemorate the miraculous healing
of a family’s son; the rite centers around offerings made to a flame represent-
ing the perfected satı̄mātā while onlooking women ecstatically chant and sing
praises to that satı̄mātā.
The domestic rites of singing and the worship at the house shrines bring
the satı̄mātā into the domestic sphere intimately, but at other times, the
worship of the satı̄ is focused on the site of her cremation (satı̄-sthal), which
usually lies at the edge of the village. Courtright’s analysis (1994, 34–41) of
worship at a satı̄ shrine includes a description of a head-shaving ritual and
a satı̄mātā possession ritual, and shows how these rituals are performed in
order to protect the male lineage and marital happiness. Routine worship at
satı̄mātā shrines may take the form of a brief prostration (dhok denā/darśan)
or of making offerings—in particular water pots, wedding veils, and a special
fifty-six-course meal—similar in appearance to pūjā to other goddesses.47
Large-scale temples, most notably that of Rānı̄ Satı̄ in Jhunjhunu, are centers
for satı̄ worship and are “open daily” for regular devotees and pilgrims (Hard-
grove 2004, 261, 271–; Noble and Sankhyan 1994, 365), Finally, processions
and pilgrimage to satı̄mātā temples are performed as an act of piety, to fulfill a
vow, to mark a rite of passage, to commemorate the satı̄mātā’s death anniver-
sary, or as a marker of Rajasthani or Marwari identity (Hardgrove 2004, 271–
280). The worship of satı̄mātās occurs in association with life-cycle rites and
familial celebrations performed at satı̄ shrines, celebrated with the rātijagā
(night-singing sessions), which include satı̄mātā songs, and are marked by
pilgrimage to satı̄ shrines. The public worship of satı̄mātās is intimately
connected to western Indian, but especially identities as Rajasthani Rajputs
and Marwaris—on the basis of their claims to identity with Rajputs—because
of historical and mythological links with nostalgic representations of Rajastha-
ni martial culture (Babb 2004, 133–135; Hardgrove 2004, 16–17).
Contemporary scholarly analysis of the satı̄ rite itself provides links be-
tween this rite and other forms of imperial, martial, or heroic death. Fisch
(2005) forges links between the satı̄ death and other imperial funerals, which
center on the ideal of subordinates following someone of high status into
death. Suggesting satı̄s’ interconnectedness with models of male heroism,
Harlan (2000a, 87) describes the tension as this: warrior husbands should
die honorably on the battlefield, while their wives, as pativratā, should protect
their lives; these conflicting ideals are resolved in the metanarrative of satı̄
discourse, in which the warrior dies heroically in battle and his wife dies
heroically with him on his funeral pyre. Leslie (1991c) examines the parallel
pairs of ascetic widowhood/renunciation and heroic suicide/satı̄; these paths
are framed in her discussion within caste discourses of brahmanic asceticism
and warrior heroism. Tryambaka’s advice (in his eighteenth-century Strı̄dham-
mapaddhati) to women to become satı̄s, she argues, stems from the idea that
he might have believed that it might be easier to die heroically than to
live ascetically (Leslie 1991c, 58). This contextualization of widow immolation
within the discourse of heroism can be understood to draw parallels between
heroism and satı̄ discourse more generally.
Jain Satı̄
Jains participate in the ideology of pativratā and the discourse of satı̄ when
constructing and shaping notions of women’s virtue and especially the virtue
of wives. Jains seem to adopt every ideology and practice of satı̄ except
the satı̄mātā and her death on her husband’s funeral pyre.48 What this book
explores—what set me on this project in the first place—is the question: what
might a satı̄ look like without the one practice that has seemed to define her?
26 HEROIC WIVES
Fortunately, Jain satı̄s seem to provide some answers to that question. The
women who serve as role models for Jain wives are not named satı̄s by accident.
Satı̄ discourse presents a model of wifely virtue, which is simultaneously linked
to western Indian models of heroism; note that the Jains use the martial term
Jina or victor to name their enlightened teachers. In this way, Jain satı̄s are linked
to the heroic by the heroic nature of their dedication to Jainism. This discourse is
sufficiently multivalent to support the seemingly contradictory roles of devoted
wives, powerful nuns, and satı̄mātās. Jains propose a collectivity of virtuous
women who through their dedication to the religious ideals of Jain womanhood
stand as role models. This volume is an attempt to tease out the different ways
in which Jain discourse on wifehood is shaped by the ideologies of pativratā and
satı̄, and how these are integrated with the Jain ideology of renunciation.
Agency, Selfhood, and the Jain Body
That the discourse on satı̄s centers around questions of agency has the unfor-
tunate effect of privileging of the individual acting toward her own desire or
benefit. Responding to post-Orientalism criticism, Mohanty (1984) describes
how colonial discourse inscribed women as victims of third world culture,
leading scholars to examine agency in the lives of Third World women more
carefully. Abu-Lughod (1990, 42) has argued that the desire to seek examples
of resistance made feminist scholars romanticize resistance as a kind of
feminist consciousness that refuses to comply with power. This critique
gave rise to a number of ethnographic studies that examined the agency of
women, carefully delimiting their claims of power, including excellent work on
the ritual lives of women in India.49 This work deeply influenced my first
book on Jain laywomen’s singing circles (mandals) as a locus of religious
__ _
authority; these earlier works all recognized the limits on the power of women’s
resistance through ritual and laid the groundwork for more nuanced thinking
about the relationships of power to ritual.
The definitions of agency in this scholarship often rely on the equation
of agency with resistance; ultimately, agency is still granted to those whose acts
represent a counterdiscourse to male hegemony, denying agent status to those
women who comply with or accommodate status quo ideologies about women.
And yet, for scholars who are interested in the ways that individuals negotiate
within hegemonic discourses and ideologies, this definition of agency is
still too limiting. Better, then, to adopt the definition used by practice theorists
who argue that agency can be defined as the “culturally constrained capacity to
act” (Ahearn 2001, 54). Within this definition, we can find agential thinking
and acting when women make conventional choices, as they do in a Jain

context when they choose to marry, fast for their husbands’ health, and adopt
the practices associated with female modesty and sexual control.
In her study of Muslim women’s piety, Mahmood (2005) argues that
scholars must move away from the progressivist idealization of individualism
in order to understand configurations of desire and virtue in their particula-
rities. Adhering to renuciation ideology may appear to us to resist pativratā
ideology, and Jain women who carried out these acts of “resistance” appeared to
articulate conformity to the other ideology; for example, although women who
perform long fasts could be understood to be resisting their roles as wives,
they do so by acting in accordance to normative and conventional liberation-
directed ideologies (Kelting 2006b; Reynell 2006). These acts were not
framed as resistance by Jain women themselves, and on the few occasions
when I asked if resistance to the pressures of wifehood was part of the rationale
for a taking a vow, women strenuously argued that their vow was for their own
liberation; by not engaging with my question directly, these women framed the
ritual not as resistance but as compliance.50 Jain women perform fasts that
simultaneously celebrate normative moksa-mārg ideologies while publicly
participating in the performance of wifehood. Mahmood (2005, 15) sums up
her rationale for her close study of apparently antiprogressive acts adopted
by Muslim women, stating: “In this sense, agentival capacity is entailed not
only in those acts that resist norms but also in the multiple ways in which one
inhabits norms.” Similarly, it is analysis of the ways that Jain women inhabit
or embody Jain norms about wifehood that dominates my discussions about
Jain wives’ religious practices in this book.
What is relevant here is not whether Jain women have agency or not, nor is
it the fact that Jain women see themselves as having choices; what matters,
rather, is the ways in which they deploy concepts of agency and choice in their
discussion of wifehood. Jain women often named their own acts as determi-
ners of or at least major contributors toward their futures: “this fast helped me
get a good husband,” “that vow gained me the merit which led to healing my
sickness,” and “my fasting kept my husband’s heart attack from killing him.”
While these statements clearly support the ideologies that make women
responsible for the health and welfare of their families, they are also claims
of agency. In making these claims, Jain wives negotiate a number of ways
that Jains think about a husband’s health: (1) Jain karma theory suggests that
the husband’s health is the result of his past acts; (2) Jains recognize that the
medical connections between health practices and illness leave a husband’s
behavior out of a woman’s control;51 (3) Jains recognize that the sociopolitical
realities of their community restrict a woman’s ability to control her husband’s
28 HEROIC WIVES
health practices; and (4) a wife is expected as a pativratā to zealously fortify her
position and her family’s well-being through ritual practices. The many women
with whom I spoke about wifehood for this project routinely asserted agency
through their ritual practices and their relationship to wifehood, and they did
so within the discourses of Jain karma theory and selfhood.
Insofar as the “constrained capacity to act” defines agency, Jains grant
agency to all souls.52 Jains believe that the acts of an individual (that is, an
embodied soul) karmically constitute that individual’s body, and that this
process is ongoing. At any given juncture, therefore, an individual can act in
accordance to Jain teachings or not. By acting in accordance to Jain teachings,
an individual may decrease the embodied soul’s “bad” karma (pāp or aśubh
karma) or gain “good” karma or merit (punya _ or śubh karma). In order to
achieve liberation, the soul must be free from any karma, including good
karma. Performing austerities can detach some of the karma, which has
been bound to the soul, while any acts that decrease passion or any time
spent in states of inaction (such as motionless, silent meditation) would slow
or stop the influx of karma. However, since liberation is impossible in these
times and because at any time it is very difficult to achieve liberation without
becoming a monk or nun, lay Jains also strive to increase their merit or good
karma (punya). This good karma will increase a person’s well-being in this life
and the next, and may also lead one to a birth from which liberation is possible.
By choosing to perform fasts, an individual may decrease his or her overall
karma, while at the same time gaining merit. Jain narratives suggest particular
benefits arising from particular meritorious acts, and Jain karma theory sup-
ports this. Jain satı̄ narratives ultimately posit that a pious Jain woman can use
her religiosity to be the full agent of her well-being. Her ritual practices
promise her both karma reduction and marital happiness, but the results are
sited within the constraints of Jain discourses of renunciation, merit, and
wifehood. The stories tell how religious practices remedy marital disasters,
protect women from violence and unwanted suitors, or allow them to choose to
be wives or nuns freely, suggesting that piety will permit a woman to choose
her future freely and affect the outcomes of her decisions for the betterment
of herself and those who matter to her. Jain laywomen use their knowledge of
Jain satı̄ narratives and their related rituals to creatively control the kinds
of karma they bind and therefore the results of their religious acts.
The distinction between personhood (how humans become conceptua-
lized as social beings) and selfhood (how humans conceptualize and reflect
on their embodied experience) illustrates the multiple levels of identity
at which an individual may think and act.53 In her essay on Jain women’s
personhood, Reynell (2006, 214) argues that Jain karma theory and the
importance of moksa-mārg ideology provide a locus for Jain selfhood. When a

˙
young married woman performs fasts, she simultaneously fortifies the well-
being of her husband’s lineage, promoting her personhood as a wife, and
creates a context for her own contexts of separation from that personhood
and self-reflection, promoting her selfhood (Reynell 2006, 219–223, 229–
232). In Reynell’s case and in my observations, the selfhood of a person is not
necessarily unified, but instead may reflect changing contexts and self-reflec-
tion. Jain women express a sense of self particularly in the context of fasting,
where Jain notions of the individual embodied soul’s spiritual path are in the
forefront of the discourse.
For Jain women, the performativity of wifely bodies is a process in which
women comply with and accommodate the ideologies of wifehood and nun-
hood through ritual choreographies. Jainism is well suited to the application of
theories of performativity—in spite of the distance between Jains and the data
and theorists of performativity—because Jains themselves assert that one’s
own acts literally materialize one’s future body (in this lifetime and the next).
We can see in Jain women’s representations of their bodies echoes of Foucault’s
(1988, 18) “technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their
own means, or with the help of others a certain number of operations on
their own bodies and souls, thought, conduct, and way of being, so as to
transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity,
wisdom, perfection, or immortality.” These technologies of the self are per-
formed within a matrix of ideological discourses, which shape the possibilities
of that selfhood. In particular, my analysis of rituals—especially in chapters 4
and 6—centers around the ways that Jain women materialize wifely bodies.
Because Jains accept that the materialization of one’s body results from one’s
actions, they understand their bodies as forever in a process of becoming or, in
an ideal life of karma reduction, unbecoming. Jain women use the opposing
ideologies of wifehood and renunciation to create ruptures through which a
woman can embody seemingly contradictory identities. Butler’s focus (1993)
on the performativity of sex and the materialization of the body seems to evoke
ways in which Jains already understand the nature of their own body practices.
In a sense, the body is disciplined through ritual (after Asad 1993) to a
performativity, which constitutes an ideal self. Hollywood (2006) argues for
an understanding of ritualization (after Bell 1992), which can integrate the
body practices of ritual with the ideas of performativity developed by Butler.
Although Butler’s work has come under considerable criticism for her
valorization of the resisting, volitional self, perhaps most convincingly argued
in Bordo’s (2003, 289–296) critique of Gender Trouble (Butler 1990), I still find
Butler’s notions of the performativity of the body, best articulated in Bodies That
30 HEROIC WIVES
Matter (Butler 1993), and her language of constitutive and reiterative acts
useful in the context of Jain ritual culture and theories of action. In Mrozik’s
(2006, 16, and 2007, 31–32, 63–70) use of Butler in her analysis of Buddhist
writings on the body, she likewise sees the congruence between Buddhist
karma theory and the performative nature of the body. In Jain contexts,
I find this congruence doubly useful, because of the fundamentally materialist
workings of Jain karma theory. Butler, however, centers her notion of the
morphology around language and the speech act (after J. L. Austin) as perfor-
mative, ultimately—and unsatisfyingly—nearly eliding the body with the
speech act. Reviving Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of habitus—as a bodily citation,
even when the habitus is a form of speech—can help us conceptualize the way
that the everyday can be performed into a personhood without devolving
all performativity into a speech act. Foster (1998, 5) critiques Butler (along
with most feminist scholarship on performance) for the focus on language
in performativity to the exclusion of other forms of discourse. Foster suggests
choreography as a more productive model, because it includes gesture along-
side speech and permits gesture to be discursive (Foster 1998, 29–30). The
body, then, is materialized through the constitutive performance of a choreog-
raphy of acts and gestures available for body practices within its sociohistorical
gendered context.
Other critics of Butler (most notably Ben-Habib 1992) have focused
on the question of whether a fully discursive body (as Butler proposes) can
be an agent. Barvosa-Carter argues that although Butler does not explore
the potentials of multiple identities for agency, the foundations of agency
may be found in Butler’s arguments for multiply constructed bodies.
Barvosa-Carter writes: “Subjects that are socially constituted with complex
social webs are thus socially constructed not with one set of enabling
constraints—but a variety of different sets of enabling constraints each
of which consists of the meanings, values, and practices that comprise a
different identity. It is this multiplicity of construction that, in my view, is
the primary source for the variation in performativity that is the hallmark
of agency” (Barvosa-Carter 2005, 179). Barvosa-Carter further argues that
the space created by the selective performance of particular identities opens
up room for a reflexive selfhood. Jain women use ritual and everyday
performances of multiple identities to perform themselves into selfhood.
The strategic deployment of socioreligious identities is a central question
in my study, and these scholars’ thoughts on the constitution of the body
and the self through performance resonate with the ways that Jain women
spoke to me about their own bodies and with my observations of the
performances themselves, and shape my thinking about performance, body,

and selfhood throughout this book.
Jain satı̄ narrative traditions and their associated rituals have much to say
about wifehood and its possibilities for virtue. In my observations, wives often
expressed a wide range of interpretations of what it means to be a good
wife. Religious practice is a particularly ripe area for examining this multiva-
lence, because Jain narratives of religious women afford contemporary Jain
laywomen with a multitude of sanctified trajectories. Laywomen need not
justify their own religious acts, but creatively use the discourse of Jain satı̄s
to bolster the virtue of their choices. Wives serve as husband protectors, but
also as teachers of Jainism, as patrons of rituals, as donors of alms to mendi-
cants, and as a moral compass for the family. Jain women integrate in speech
and embodied action multiple ideological stances to create a space for them-
selves as wives.
Overview of the Book
Part I: “Making Ideal Marriages,” including chapters 2, 3 and 4, focuses on

questions of defining the ideal marriage and the capacity of wives to control
how their marriages develop within Jain discourse on marriages. Chapter
2 addresses the ways that Jain women, like Hindu women, locate their well-
being in their status as auspicious wives with living husbands (saubhāgya) and
the rituals they perform to protect the health and well-being of their families,
especially their husbands. This chapter discusses five strategies invoked for
protecting a Jain woman’s saubhāgya, including a description and analysis of
the Rohinı̄ narrative and its accompanying fast, the most powerful of Jain fasts
_
for saubhāgya. In chapter 3, the Jain satı̄ narratives of Subhadrā and Añjanā
suggest that a woman’s piety and fidelity to Jainism will not only protect her
saubhāgya but will also bring about marital happiness by transforming bad
marriages into good or ideal ones. A variety of marital difficulties are neatly
resolved in two well-known satı̄ stories—Subhadrā and Añjanā—which portray
the wife as the primary agent of rituals who ultimately secures her own marital
happiness. In addition to accruing karmic benefits of ritual acts, both Jain satı̄s
in their narratives and contemporary Jain women deploy religion strategically
to increase their authority and perceived virtue within the community to
ensure marital happiness and personal well-being. Chapter 4 examines the
ideal Jain marriage, that of the satı̄ Maynāsundarı̄ and King Śrı̄pāl; this pair
_
shares a companionate marriage centered around mutuality and the shared
32 HEROIC WIVES
performance of Jain rituals. Their story provides a charter both for the quintes-
sential fast for marital happiness—the popular Navpad Olı̄ fast—and for
_
worship of the siddhacakra, which reenacts the ideal moment in the ideal
marriage and blesses the couple who perform it with an ideal marriage.
Part II: “Negotiating Discourses,” includes a pair of chapters (5 and 6) that
center on the ruptures in this Jain discourse on wifehood. Jain women negoti-
ate between the mutually exclusive ideologies of devoted wifehood (pativratā)
and renunciation (moksa mārg): how does a Jain woman successfully both
˙
focus her devotion on her husband and strive for individual salvation through
renunciation? In chapter 5, the focus is on the narrative and rituals associated
with the satı̄ Rājul, who is rejected on her wedding day when her fiancé Nemi
renounces. Though Jains reject the rite of dying with one’s husband, shifts in
the portrayal of the Nemi and Rājul story and the veneration of Rājul trace the
move from an uncomplicated renunciation narrative to a narrative that shares
many features with Hindu satı̄mātā stories. Chapter 6 discusses the process by
which young unmarried Jain women reconstitute themselves as wives through
the embodiment of Jain satı̄s—in particular Candanbālā—and the adoption
of the body practices of wifehood. At the same time, these Jain women also use
fasting rituals to covertly explore the possibility of renunciation without stating
any overt intention to renounce. When comparing young women’s embodi-
ment of satı̄ Candanbālā in one fast with their reenactments of Rājul, it is
clear that these young women strategically deploy these satı̄s’ incipient renun-
ciation to embody their own experimentation and negotiation with wifehood
and renunciation in ways that position themselves as agents controlling their
own futures.
Finally, I conclude the volume with a return to the discourse of wifehood as
celebrated by Jain laywomen through iconic representations of domesticity and
pleasure. In my extensive fieldwork with Jain laywomen, the majority of Jain
wives have expressed joy in wifehood and participate in a variety of Jain rituals
that mark wifehood as a special and honored state within Jain discourse.
Jain women’s ritual performances associated with Jain satı̄s creatively
deploy the discourses of the multiple ideologies that constitute Jain wifehood.
This study attempts to tease out the threads of these performances in order to
better understand the discourse of wifehood in Jain communities and in South
Asia. The performance of Jain wifehood illuminates potentials for examining
the performance of multiple identities within a shared gendered identity and
suggests its further implications for our understanding of selfhood.
PART I
Making Ideal Marriages

2
Fasting, Saubhāgya, and Jain
Satı̄ Narratives
Jains, like Hindus, participate in the discourse of good wives as

pativratās and the centrality of maintaining one’s position as an
auspicious married woman (saubhāgyavatı̄), that is, a woman with a
living husband. Though this model is not the only possibility for
perfection for a Jain woman—they can renounce—wifehood is the
role that most Jain women adopt and strive for. The importance of
husbands for the Jain women I work with as their best protection from
socioeconomic hardship cannot be overstated, and this relationship
serves as the primary focus of ritual and material labor, attention, and
emotion. The concern in this chapter is primarily women’s desires and
rituals to ensure the long life of one’s husband. The preoccupation
with saubhāgya manifests in storytelling, worship, fasting, and other
vows taken by laywomen. Although scholarship on Jains asserts that
Jains cannot have merit transfer, it is clear that in certain contexts
Jains assume that the karmic benefits of their acts can and are
extended to others (Cort 2003). Because of Jain theological challenges
to merit transfer, however, Jain laywomen also use a number of
strategies for channeling the protective powers of their religious acts
toward the health and well-being of their husbands. These strategies
include teaching a husband correct praxis, encouraging a husband’s
own piety and his participation in the wife’s ritual, garnering the
blessings of guardian deities, and performing religiomagic practices
of protection linked to Jain ritual amulets and substances. In this
chapter, our discussion centers around those ways of protecting one’s
36 MAKING IDEAL MARRIAGES
saubhāgya that Jain laywomen understand to be Jain rituals.1 In each of these

cases, the promises of protection of a woman’s saubhāgya make these practices
among the most common of those adopted by contemporary Jain laywomen.
The Rohinı̄ fast claims to create equanimity and to protect a wife from
_
sorrow—in particular, that most devastating sorrow of widowhood. It is under-
stood that Jain fasts work because they are a potent method for both the
reduction of karma and the prevention of new karma binding to the soul. Yet
neither of these processes directly maintains one’s status as an auspicious wife.
Focusing first on four strategies that circumvent the Jain proscription on merit
transfer and then on the Rohinı̄ satı̄ narrative-ritual complex that Jain women
_
regularly invoked as a powerful model for wifely equanimity and saubhāgya,
my analysis will illustrate the possibilities for a devoted wife to maintain her
saubhāgya within normative Jain discourse.2
As a brief illustration of the tensions between Jain views of self-determi-
nation and the ideals of women as agents of protection in the family, Jain
women told me the story of the sati, Sulasā:3
¯ ’S STORY
SULASA
Sulasā and her husband, Nāga, could not have children. One day Nāga
told Sulasā about his fears that he would die sonless and his soul
would be bound for hell. Sulasā gave him a lecture on Jain dharma,
illustrating that one’s own virtuous acts are the only way to prevent a
rebirth in hell and that having sons to perform one’s funeral makes no
difference. When Nāga remained unconvinced, Sulasā suggested that
he take a second wife. He told her that he could not because he had
vowed to only have one wife. Sulasā said that they should just be good
Jains. One day the god Harinagamemsı̄ came to Sulasā’s house posing
_ ˙
as a Jain monk on his alms rounds and, after seeing her dedication, he
offered her a boon. Sulasā asked for a son for her husband. Sulasā
conceived thirty-two sons, but she was told that they would all die on
the same day. When they grew up they were guards for King Śrenik,
and died in battle. Nāga was desolate, but Sulasā told him that he
should simply focus on liberation. Sulasā rededicated herself to
religion and was later singled out by Mahāvı̄r as the ideal laywoman.
Sulasā later died and went to heaven. She will be reborn as the
fifteenth Jina, Nirmamaswāmı̄, in the next cycle of time.
The Sulasā story demonstrates the tension between Jain normative religious
individualism and South Asian pativratā discourse by having Sulasā attempt
to explain Jain karma theory to her husband and then, when he does not
FASTING , SAUBHĀGYA , AND JAIN SATĪ NARRATIVES 37
understand, she complies with pativratā expectations and strives to do what her
husband wants. Sulasā’s lecture on Jain dharma consists of normative Jain
karma theory: one’s liberation can only arise from one’s own acts. But when her
husband is not satisfied with her argument, she acts as a more typical devoted
wife (pativratā) by first offering to let him take a second wife and then by using
her boon to bear a son. Though Sulasā never renounces, the normatively Jain
ending to the story—her focus on liberation—suggests a certain detachment
from wifehood (and motherhood). This story resolves the tension clearly on the
side of normative Jain values—as if to say that husband and sons come first,
yes, but focus on your own liberation in the end. Still, the social imperative to
protect one’s husband does not disappear in a puff of normative orthopraxy.
Contemporary Jains participate fully, but uneasily, in the South Asian dis-
course of women’s religious practices for saubhāgya. What is interesting is
that they do so with an awareness of this as a problem—which I will call, for
lack of a more graceful term, the problem of merit transfer—and adjust their
practices in ways that make them efficacious as Jain practices.
Karma Theory and Jain Merit Transfer
To understand how Jains creatively accommodate saubhāgya practices, they

must be set in the context of merit transfer in South Asia more broadly. Merit
transfer is a common method of promoting auspicious wifehood (saubhāgya)
in the South Asian religious landscape. Studies of Hindu women have found
that they often use fasts to protect the health and life of their husbands and
children (McGee 1987, 467–499; Pearson 1996, 78–83; Tewari 1991, 8–13,
16–18). Although fasting is central to the protection of saubhāgya, Hindu
women also fortify their saubhāgya through ongoing devotional relationships
with deities, particular pūjās and festival worship, pilgrimage, and social
practices (Pintchman 2006, 226). In particular, Hindu woman perform auste-
rities whose efficacy—in the form of power (tapas) or boons from deities—is
then transferred ritually or votively to another member of the family. Hindu
women most pointedly perform particular fasts for the long life of their
husbands and the general well-being of their husband’s lineage, most notably
the Vata Sāvitrı̄ fast (Jeth New Moon, or Full Moon in Maharashtra), Karva
_ _
Cauth fast (Kārtak dark fourth) and the (Haritālikā) Tı̄j fast (Bhadrapad bright
third).4 The widely observed Vata Sāvitrı̄ vow is performed in imitation of
_
Sāvitrı̄, who succeeds by her cunning in rescuing her husband from Yama,
the god of death (McGee 1987, 468). The fast requires wives to perform a full
fast on the day and to perform a pūjā and fast-breaking ceremony the following
morning. Women traditionally gather together at the foot of a banyan tree and
make offerings—particularly of the signs of auspicious wifehood—to the gods.
They then circumambulate the banyan tree with thread while praying for the
long life of their husbands. After the worship is done, women invite auspi-
ciously married women to their homes and make special offerings of the signs
of wifehood to them (McGee 1987, 479–481). The merit and benefits of these
practices are then transferred to the woman’s husband or children through the
intention of the person who has accumulated the merit (McGee 1987, 60).
Pearson (1996, 162–163) writes of that the efficacy of the (Haritālikā) Tij fast to
protect a woman’s saubhāgya arises directly out of the heat (tapas) that is
produced through austerity, and therefore women who perform this fast
acquire its benefits directly without any divine intercession or discussion of
karma. In many Hindu ritual stories—perhaps best known in the story of
Pārvatı̄’s fasts leading to her marriage to Śiva—a woman’s austerities are
rewarded by a boon from pleased deities, thus providing another strategy for
linking a woman’s austerities with the well-being of others. Merit transfer and
divine grace are key ways that Hindu women protect their saubhāgya. In a
Hindu context, there is no conflict over transferring merit, or doing for others,
because it is an expected duty of women (McGee 1987, 359–361), and this
practice has links to other Hindu practices (such as śrāddha, feeding the
deceased) in which individuals act on behalf of others.
South Asian Buddhism presents a model more similar to that of Jain
normative views of merit in which there is an expectation that an individual’s
merit arises both from one’s own acts and from merit transfer. The ideal
act of compassion is teaching Buddhism, but merit transfer—particularly in
funerary rites, recitations, and donation—develops in order to enable
Buddhists to act on behalf of others (Schopen 1997, 79). The performer of
an act—monk or lay Buddhist—may share the merit of that act with others
(Schopen 1997, 246). In inscriptions, merit is usually transferred to the dead
(often parents) or to all sentient beings as an act of compassion. In a
discussion of vow taking among Sri Lankan Buddhists, Goonasekera
(2006, 112–114) describes a complex merit transfer in which the votary
would perform Buddhist worship in a temple and then have the merit of
this worship transferred as a thank-you gift to the deity who helped the votary
in his or her worldly concern. Theravāda Buddhists did not seem to develop
complex rites of merit transfer to husbands, as we find in both Hindu
and Jain contexts. However, Theravāda Buddhists use amulets to transfer
the power of the Buddha and his teachings, and of charismatic Buddhist
saints to themselves and others to whom they give the amulets (Tambiah
1984, 195–229, 258–265).
For Jains, however, merit transfer is more problematic. Jain scholar-monks

have made the particulars of karma theory and liberation central to their intel-
lectual identity (Cort 2003, 145), and thus karma theory weighs heavily in the
balance of normative Jainism. Jain karma theory makes clear claims that merit
transfer is impossible and that one can only benefit from one’s own acts. To
begin with a bit of background on Jain karma theory, there are two worthy but
ranked goals within Jain normative ideology: the ideal goal of moksa (release
˙
from rebirth through the total negation of karma) and the worthy goal of well-
being and a good rebirth through the accumulation of merit. Since moksa is
˙
impossible in this era, most Jains strive for well-being in this lifetime and the
next, and hope that their merit leads them ultimately to a rebirth from which
moksa is possible.5 These two goals are reached through different means. In
˙
order to strive for moksa, one aims to reduce karma. Karma reduction is
˙
achieved ultimately through nonaction; first, one strives to do as few karma-
binding acts as possible and second, one performs austerities—in particular
fasting and confession—which help destroy those karmas that do bind. The
profound materiality of Jain karma leaves Jains focused on the discipline of the
body as the locus of karma reduction. There are three kinds of acts that bind
karma—thinking, speaking, and doing—a triad embedded in the ritual of
confession (in the aticārālocanā and the pratikraman-bı̄ja-sūtra) that Jain lay-
_
women perform as part of any fast they perform (Williams 1963, 204–205);
though Jains do concern themselves with intention, which they locate as a form
of “thinking about doing,” this is but one of the causes of karma binding, and
good karma cannot mitigate the inevitable karmic results of one’s bad acts.6
There are also three levels of engagement with any particular act, which
mirror the above model: appreciating someone doing, having someone do, and
doing oneself.7 Though each of these levels binds karma (merit or demerit),
doing the act oneself binds the maximum amount of karma. The most merit is
gained by doing something good oneself, and the least by appreciating some-
one else doing something good.8 Having someone do a ritual for you differs
from merit transfer because in this model the beneficiary must engage with
the desire to have a ritual performed, whereas in merit transfer the beneficiary
need not even know an act has been performed. We can see how according to
normative Jain karma theory it is impossible for one to transfer merit, because
the beneficiary of good acts must somehow participate in the act whose karma
is binding. Instead, one can bind good karma with relative ease through the
appreciation of good acts, but this, in Jain karmic discourse, is still an act.9
Appreciating the good acts of others, however, is a relatively weak source of
merit, and thus Jain women continue to seek other avenues for channeling the
benefits of their piety toward their husbands.
Though Jain karma theory suggests that there is no merit transfer, Jains do
seem to participate in merit transfer, particularly in the context of mortuary
rituals. Cort (2003, 132) argues that scholars must be careful to recognize the
long-present stream of merit transfer in the Jain tradition, which should not be
dismissed as simply lay Jains misunderstanding Jainism. In fact, inscriptional
evidence and narrative literature suggest that Jains have long performed acts
with the intention of benefiting deceased relatives or entire lineages (Cort
2003, 137; Granoff 1992, 184). Though Jains do not perform the Vedic rite of
śrāddha in which the deceased are fed, they do perform a number of funerary
rituals, which suggest that the living can assist the dead by transferring the
merit of certain acts to the deceased. Three common funerary acts that suggest
merit transfer are the performance of large pūjās (in particular, the Antarāya-
karma Nivarananı̄ pūjā) in order to remove any obstacles in the soul’s new
_
birth; donations (popularly, the offering of the merit of book publication to the
deceased); and the sponsorship of annual rituals at pilgrimage temples, which
create an ongoing source of merit for the deceased’s soul in its future births.
These kinds of merit transfer are usually carried out by an entire family on
behalf of the deceased.
Contemporary Jains also understand merit to be transferable generally
from the virtue of one individual to the whole family or as an intended result
(sankalp) of a ritual act. For the former, Reynell (1985b, 30) gives an account of a
man who attributed his business success to the religious practices of his father,
suggesting a merit transfer or at least the idea that his father’s acts benefited
the entire family. Laidlaw (1995, 342) also explains that when a laywoman
offers alms to a Jain monk she converts an individual act into an act on behalf
of the whole family, and thereby garners merit for all of them. Cort (2003, 129)
recounts a woman’s performance of a three-day fast with the stated intention of
transferring the merit to her ailing father. The performance of the Navpad Olı̄
_
fast (discussed at length in chapter 4) is widely believed to protect the health of
husbands by a form of merit transfer; in other words, the wife’s performance of
the fast is sufficient for her husband to benefit from the fast’s merit.10
When Jain laywomen spoke to me of rituals—especially fasts—done to
promote their saubhāgya, they often struggled with the tensions between
merit transfer in rituals Jains perform and their knowledge of the normative
position that merit transfer is impossible. In the context of the deceased,
these rites were performed with little consideration about the implications.
But when I questioned women generally about merit transfer to living persons,
most laywomen stated that living persons can (and should) perform the rituals
for themselves. And yet women also felt responsible for protecting their
husband and children and performed rituals to this end. The popular Āyambil
Olı̄ fast—discussed in chapter 4—is performed with the expectation that it will
_
automatically give protection to one’s husband (Cort 2003, 142; Reynell 1985a,
127). However, most rituals are understood to extend their protection to hus-
bands through other means.
Strategies for Maintaining One’s Saubhāgya
In order to circumvent the problem of merit transfer or, perhaps more accurate-
ly, in order to make sure that rituals are effective for the protection of their
husbands, Jain women employ four strategies that will be discussed in turn.
First, women cajole their husbands into participating directly in Jain worship in
order to garner for them the greatest amount of merit possible from a ritual.
Second, women also indirectly encourage increased piety by serving as a role
model. In this strategy, similar to those enjoined by Buddhist discourse, the
woman’s own religious progress (or her teaching) is a model for virtue for the
rest of the family, who will presumably follow suit and thereby gain the benefits
of virtuous acts. Third, wives also worship guardian deities for the protection of
their husbands; this strategy is similar to a practice common to Hindu fasting
narratives where the woman gains the protection of a deity through ongoing
devotion or through the garnering of boons. Fourth, women bring to their
husbands objects or substances that carry religiomagical protection.
Direct Participation by the Husband

The simplest way to ensure that a person gains merit is to convince him or her
to participate in merit-making rituals. Women often make religious requests of
their husbands. One young woman I know told her husband that she would
only agree to marry him if he promised to go to the temple every day. A
common vow before marriage is to go with one’s new husband to a particular
pilgrimage site. In my experience, new husbands honored this vow, if possible.
In yet another example of religious requests, several older women I know
asked their husbands to join them in a vow to stay for the four-month rainy
season at the mendicants’ hostel at Śatruñjaya.
Contemporary Jain women also cajole their husbands into adjunct partici-
pation in rituals they perform. A husband’s appreciation of his wife’s rituals—
indicated by supporting her in her decision to perform them, by supplying the
necessary materials and funds, and by publicly celebrating them—garners him
a modicum of merit, but significant stocks of merit can only be gained by some
kind of direct participation. It is fruitful to think of the participation of men in
the closing rites of Jain rituals within this context. For example, if the husband
_ l
arrives at the end of a pūjā in time to perform the closing rites—Āratı̄, Manga
_
Dı̄vo, and Śānti Kalaś—then that husband is eligible for the merit of that pūjā.
In my observation of Jain formal pūjās, if the sponsor’s husband came at all, he
would arrive just as the main pūjā was finishing and perform the closing rites
with his wife.11 Only at the largest mahāpūjās did men come for the entire
ceremony. There was a general consensus among laywomen that the presence
of the husband increased the overall benefits to the family garnered from a
pūjā, and in particular this allowed him to participate in the karmic benefits
beyond the mere appreciation of his wife’s religious practice. Wives would
periodically call their husbands to participate, if briefly, in a variety of religious
ceremonies, especially those associated with marital happiness. Most pūjās
were performed during the day, and men often did not have the time or
inclination to attend them. In addition, only one couple can perform the
closing rites for any one pūjā, limiting the number of these rites a man could
perform even if he were interested and able to do them. However, although
inviting their husbands to participate in rituals is the theologically simplest
and most overt strategy women use for promoting their husbands’ well-being,
it is not logistically simple.
Wives often resort to covert efforts to enforce certain good behaviors in
their husbands. Women control the food in the house and therefore have some
control over their husbands’ upholding Jain food restrictions and the special
restrictions on particular days. Many women explained to me the importance of
making tasty Jain food at home so that their husbands did not want to go out to
eat prohibited foods. Jain women also maintain the family’s household shrine
and ensure that worship supplies are always on hand. They make sure their
husbands are aware of the Jain religious calendar, remind the men of occasional
temple functions, and suggest possible observances.12 Women who perform
large fasts or pūjās also see these acts as providing opportunities for their
husbands to make donations or to participate in other ways without requiring
the husbands’ initiative or much of their time. In all of these cases, women were
able to ensure that their husbands benefited from performing Jain rituals and
observing Jain food rules by creating conditions in which the husbands could
most easily choose to uphold Jain expectations. These strategies directly benefit
the husband through his karma reduction or binding of meritorious karma.
Role Model
Jain women also understand that their religious virtue and acts serve as role
models for others in the family.13 Women’s acts both educate and inspire
others toward being better Jains. In ways that were not so much about direct
protection but were understood to promote the best interests of the family, Jain
wives see their role as that of the moral compass for the family. In a Jain
normative context, the best thing that one can do for someone else is to teach
them Jainism and the proper performance of its rituals.14 In Jain satı̄ narra-
tives, the satı̄’s practices start a chain of events that benefit her husband and his
lineage. In these stories, the wife’s acts (religious teachings, worship of Jinas or
guardian deities, feeding monks, or fasting) are understood to be the cause of
good fortune and are then imitated. Narratively, this might range from getting
a husband to perform a particular virtuous act to converting an entire family
and sometimes even a whole kingdom.
A Jain wife may be an active teacher of Jainism. In stories, satı̄s regularly
give sermons to their husbands, in-laws, and others, admonishing them to
follow Jainism and often expounding on a particular point of Jain theology, so
that the listeners are convinced of their wisdom and follow the satı̄’s example.
In the Sulasā story, after their sons die, Sulasā’s husband follows Sulasā’s
religious advice and performs many Jain rituals, which ultimately leads him
to liberation. These satı̄s who act as teachers are fulfilling a key role in Jain
theology by teaching right knowledge, which will then lead others to right
action. In practice, women are the primary teachers of Jain belief and practice
in the family and are responsible for most of the religious education of children
(Kelting 2001b, 71–74, 115–117; Reynell 1985a, 143–145; 1991, 59).15 In one
family I know whose Jain observances (and identity) had dwindled for several
generations, a particularly religious and knowledgeable daughter-in-law revi-
talized them as Jains, taught them normative Jain practices and beliefs, and
was credited with improving the whole family’s well-being. Women are rou-
tinely consulted (and listened to) on religious matters. Those religious issues
which women do not control are brought to mendicants, not to their laymen
husbands. For the overall moral development of the family, women’s religious
knowledge is the primary locus of authority (Kelting 2006c, 133–135).
Without being a teacher, a woman still can be a role model who encourages
correct behavior in others. In satı̄ stories, a satı̄ often performs a ritual, and its
efficacy so impresses the intended audience that they begin to perform the
ritual themselves. For example, in one satı̄ narrative discussed at length in
chapter 3, Subhadrā’s special relationship with the guardian goddess convinces
her marital family and subsequently the whole town to become Jains. In other
cases, like that of the satı̄ Māynasundarı̄, the satı̄ performs an extraordinary
_
austerity, and this inspires her husband to perform lesser, but still efficacious,
austerities. In my observations, I found that when Jain women performed long
and difficult rituals, especially fasts, their husbands and other family members
often performed some smaller austerity alongside. This kind of solidarity is a

common response to the respect garnered by women who perform grand fasts
and to the Jain virtues that the whole family is reminded of by her fast. For
example, on the last day of the forty-five day Updhān fast in 2000, three
separate families related to women performing the vow all decided to perform
some kind of fast along with the primary participant. It is also a nearly
universal practice for men to make substantial donations on the occasion of
their wives’, daughters’, and mothers’ completion of difficult fasts (Banks
1992, 86–87, 93, 189–192; Laidlaw 1995, 143–144, 185–186, 356; Reynell
1991, 64). The extreme austerities of a family’s women are marked with
increased piety on the part of other members of the family. In all these cases,
women exert some influence over the religious practices of their husbands and
relatives, and therefore lead them to accruing merit and protection. These
auxiliary acts are also central to the business of prestige building and public
religiosity (Kelting 2009b). Finally, women afford their families the opportu-
nity to encourage and appreciate the good acts of others by providing good acts
to appreciate.
Guardian Deities
Although the liberated Jinas do not act in the world, Jain guardian deities are
seen as powerful forces whose blessings are actively sought. These blessings are
fully transferable—one can ask for a blessing for someone else—and women
reported to me that they routinely made requests on behalf of others.16 In
conversations with women about ways that they protect their saubhāgya, many
women spoke of their devotion to Jain guardian deities, especially the goddess
Padmāvatı̄. There were a number of other guardian deities that Jains routinely
worshiped for well-being; the goddesses Ambikā and Cakreśvarı̄ and gods
Mānibhadra, Bherujı̄, and Ghantākarn Mahāvı̄r were most commonly named
_ __ _
and represented in temples and household shrines.17 Among Khartar Gacch
Jains, there are also the Dādāgurus who provide blessings and assistance for
those who worship them.18 Jains understand guardian deities as being capable
of acting in the world, and Jains often credit them for their experiences of well-
being.
Jain rituals are understood to work simultaneously on the level of karma
and on the level of pleasing the guardian deities. A woman who performs a
ritual improves her karma and also pleases the guardian deities, who are
themselves understood to be celestial lay Jains. These pleased guardian deities
then bless the woman or grant her requests. In contemporary understandings,
when the guardian deities bless a woman, that blessing is believed to manifest
itself in her marital happiness. In requests, the woman is able to direct that
blessing toward protecting her husband by asking the deity to protect her
status as an auspicious wife or her family’s well-being. One middle-aged
woman attributed the general well-being of her family to her ongoing devotion
to the goddess Padmāvatı̄. In more votive contexts, a woman might ask a deity
directly for a particular kind of protection—health of her husband or children,
conception of a child, and so on; if granted this request, she is enjoined to make
a votive offering in thanksgiving. One older woman vowed to make substantial
offerings to a powerful Mānibhadra image in Pabal if familial problems were
_
resolved, while another vowed to get her husband to make an offering to
Śankheśvar’s Padmāvatı̄ if his health returned. Young women cannot make
large gifts, but still do make vows to the guardian deities on a smaller scale; one
young woman vowed that she would bring a coconut and a veil to the local
temple’s Padmāvatı̄ if she were successfully engaged. After obtaining their
desired results, they all fulfilled their vows and credited the guardian deities
for their success.19 In my observations of contemporary Jain communities,
laywomen focus considerable devotional attention on guardian deities. Ongo-
ing devotional relationships with deities contributed to general well-being,
while crises were addressed with additional votive offerings.
Religiomagic Practices
Jains use a variety of religiomagical practices to protect themselves and, most
important here, others. The two strongest forms of protection are those that are
garnered from deities and those that are created by the practices associated with
mantras and yantras. The ability to transfer the power of a deity’s protection or a
ritual’s power to protect is an important part of the material culture of Jain ritual
life. Sometimes the blessing of a guardian deity may be materially manifest, and
the woman may be able to offer some of that blessing to a member of the family.
This blessing can take the form of a blessed object—commonly a thread tied
around the wrist, a thread necklace with knots, or an amulet—which is then
worn by the person for whom the woman seeks protection.20 Images of the
protecting deities may be hung in a house, pasted to vehicles, or placed in shops
to offer protection to the people using those spaces. The images are often
acquired at pilgrimage sites and brought back not only for the person who
completed the pilgrimage but also for others in the family. I have found that it
is usually women who distribute these images to others, though men will get
them for themselves when on pilgrimage.21 These protective amulets (bracelets,
necklaces, metal amulets hung on necklaces, key chains, images of deities
adhered to houses, shops, scooters, and cars) are ubiquitous in Jain households.
Jains also understand the protective potential of the power of mantras and
their material manifestations as geometric designs called yantras. The Navkār
mantra is understood to have protective qualities and is recited in moments
when one wants protection. However, mantras generally are understood to
work only for those who hear them. Someone can certainly recite a mantra to
protect those within hearing (and women did this commonly for their chil-
dren), but cannot protect those out of earshot unless the mantra itself is bound
into an amulet. Grand worship ceremonies—including those associated with
guardian deities such as a Padmāvatı̄ mahāpūjā or the fire sacrifice on black
fourteenth (kālı̄ caudas) to Ghantākaran Mahāvı̄r at Mahudi (Cort 2001b, 165–
__ _
166), or with yantras such as the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā—often include the
blessing of amulets. The recitation of mantras over the amulets (often per-
formed by a Jain monk) “locks” the blessing into the object.22 These amulets
can then be worn by those who were at a worship ceremony and also by anyone
who is given an amulet. Women commonly took home enough amulets from
these events for themselves, their husbands, and their children. Extra amulets
were saved to replace existing ones whenever they broke, or to offer to anyone
who might need protection.
In addition to amulets, there are two primary substances that are said to
carry protective properties: blessed sandalwood powder (vāskep) and the liquid
(praksāl) that has been used to bathe images and yantras.23 Vāskep is blessed
˙
through mantra recitations by Jain mendicants, and it is used to bless Jains
who come to pay homage to the mendicants. It is also a transferable blessing
that mendicants give to lay Jains so that they may share the protective blessings
of the mantra and the mendicant with others not present. Lay Jains commonly
went to receive vāskep from mendicants before starting a new project, ritual, or
trip. Vāskep was brought from mendicants to bless and protect infants, the
sick, the elderly, and the dying, and mailed to those overseas; in sum, vāskep
can carry the blessing of the mendicant to anyone who cannot themselves go to
the mendicant.
The bathing liquid from the images (praksāl) is also a transferable form of
˙
blessing. This liquid carries with it the power of the yantra over which it has
run (usually the siddhacakra, which is itself the physical manifestation of the
Nāvkār mantra), which can then be used to heal and protect those who apply
this liquid to themselves.24 When this bathing water is further empowered
with mantras (as it is when the Moti Śānti text is recited over the pouring
pitchers of praksāl in the Śānti Kalaś which completes large worship ceremo-
˙
nies), the liquid is doubly powerful. This liquid could be brought home and
applied to the walls of the house to protect the family and anyone who was not
at the ceremony. This substance is known to be both healing and protective;
after a major ceremony women will gather to fill small containers to bring
some home.25 After some major ceremonies, the large bowl filled with this
blessed liquid is covered and kept in the house of the patron for several days to
extend the blessings and power of the event to the house and its inhabitants. In
my observation, this practice was widely believed by women to encourage
conception.26 During one of the grandest ceremonies ever performed at the
temple in Shivajinagar, a two-day Śānti Snātra mahāpūjā, several women had
put objects inside the container where all the praksāl and other offerings were
˙
collected for the duration of the ceremony. Once the ceremony was complete,
these objects were collected and brought home to protect their houses. I was
told that this was the very best kind of protective object one could possess, and
if the object was a silver water-pot (kalaś ) it was then linked to the worship of
lineage goddesses who also protect the family.
Although Jains clearly do participate in rituals in which merit is trans-
ferred from the performer to another person, Jain women were reluctant to
assert the possibility of merit transfer themselves; in this, Jain women partici-
pate in the hegemonic discourse of elite scholars of karma theory that the
women have acquired in filtered ways by reading publications and hearing
sermons derived from normative texts. Instead, Jain women named other
strategies for ensuring that their own religious practices can directly benefit
others, particularly husbands and children. They often explained how they
were able to gain merit and protection for their husbands by inducing their
husbands to participate in the rituals, to perform other rituals after observing
their wife’s piety, or to accept religiomagical objects and substances brought to
him. Without the participation of one’s husband, a woman can still garner
boons from the Jain guardian deities that she can apply to the protection of her
husband. Usually women utilize a combination of these strategies in a variety
of rituals—most powerfully in fasting and pūjā complexes—in order to protect
their saubhāgya.
Fasting for Saubhāgya
Jain women fast for a number of reasons, with a variety of expected or hoped-
for results. The results range from the most orthodox karmic understanding—
to reduce karma—to more complex understandings associated with saubhāgya
(Kelting 2006b, 192–195). Pearson (1996, 196–208) and Pintchman (2005,
186–190) likewise found that Hindu women understood their vows to act on
multiple fronts, including both the personal spiritual benefits to the woman
and the protection of her husband and his family, and generally providing a
social context in which women’s authority is accepted and interests honored.27

Any Jain fast performed by a woman can work in multiple ways to protect a
woman and her husband. The woman herself benefits directly from the
decrease in karma, and then perhaps she will receive a blessing from a
guardian goddess, which can be shared. In addition, she and her family may
receive blessed objects, which can be distributed. Her family may attend
rituals, which allow them to share in the benefits of a woman’s acts. And
finally, but most lastingly, her family may become more observant of Jain
rites and restrictions as a result of her example. In general, fast and pūjā
complexes are effective for saubhāgya because they reduce karma, garner
merit for those involved, and provide opportunities for utilizing the four
strategies discussed above. However, few of the many Jain fasts are specifically
targeted at saubhāgya.
When asked generally which fasts are good for saubhāgya, Jains named a
number of such fasts. The two most commonly named in Pune were the
Navpad Olı̄ (a fast arising from the narratives about Maynāsundarı̄) and Rohinı̄
_ _ _
fasts. There were other fasts named as effective for saubhāgya; I was told by a
number of women that the Pañcamı̄ Saubhāgya fast (which is discussed briefly
in chapter 5) was very powerful for protecting the health of one’s husband.
I was also told that the Aksaynidhi fast was helpful for financial well-being, and
˙
that even a simple one-day Āyambil would be helpful in promoting saubhā-
gya.28 In a morning sermon in 2001, the monk Devguptavijay, who made his
rainy-season retreat at the Shivajinagar temple, said that women should per-
form both the Candanbālā fast (discussed in chapter 6) and the Rohinı̄ fast in
_
order to be happy and bless their families (7 July 2001). Reynell (1985, 127–136)
found that the Navpad Olı̄ fast and the Aksaynidhi fast were named as key fasts
_ ˙
for the promotion of marital well-being among Jain laywomen in Jaipur.29 In
Patan, Gujarat, Cort (2001b, 140) was told that the Āyambil Olı̄, eight-day
_
(aththaı̄), fifteen-day (paksman), and month-long (māskhaman) fasts were effec-
_ _ ˙ _ _
tive for protecting one’s saubhāgya, while in Jaipur, Laidlaw (1995, 225–228)
was told Āyambil Olı̄ and Rohinı̄ fasts were particularly good fasts for women
_ _
because they were effective in the area of saubhāgya.
It is unsurprising that the two most commonly named fasts for saubhāgya
are those associated with great satı̄s known for being auspicious wives:
Maynāsundarı̄ and Rohinı̄. The fasting instructions for both of these fasts
_ _
themselves suggest that they would be useful for protecting husbands. In a
sense, both the Navpad Olı̄ and the Rohinı̄ fasts are strategies for bridging the
_ _
gap between the expectation that women will perform rituals for the benefit of
their husbands and the understanding within Jain doctrine of one’s ultimate
karmic responsibility and the inability to transfer merit. The Navpad Olı̄ fast
_
utilizes three of the four strategies named above. Jain women performing the
Navpad Olı̄ fast often cajoled their husbands into performing one āyambil
_
fast—a one-sitting fast of bland food—during their fast, and expected their
husbands to participate in the pūjā completing this fast. This four-and-a-half-
year fast provides ample time for the woman performing the fast to serve as a
role model of ideal Jain lay praxis for her family and community. The Navpad
Olı̄ fast requires vows for fasting, daily worship including offerings, veneration
_
of mendicants, mantra recitation, meditation, confession, and study of reli-
gious texts, fulfilling each of the six daily obligations (āvaśyak) and the addi-
tional karma-reducing acts focused on austerity and knowledge.30 The Navpad
Olı̄ pūjā provides the performer with both amulets and praksāl, which women
_ ˙
shared with their husbands. The Navpad Olı̄ fast is a popular public fast with
_
all the rituals performed communally, and it is linked to ongoing maintenance
of saubhāgya.
Jain laywomen named the Rohinı̄ fast as the most difficult and effective of
_
the saubhāgya fasts, and it therefore demands exploration. The Rohinı̄ fast was
_
the only fast that I was told was exclusively for women and that men should not
perform it.31 The Rohinı̄ fast requires a fast on the rohinı̄ day (an astrological
_ _
date) of each month for seven years and seven months.32 Although, in fact, the
fasting itself is relatively modest by Jain standards (a single one-day full fast per
month), the longer full fasts are generally directed at decreasing karma and
striving toward liberation rather than saubhāgya.33 What was difficult, women
insisted, was that one had to have the right sentiment and emotional state
(bhāv); while fasting, the faster cannot feel strong emotions, particularly nega-
tive emotions. The ability to have equanimity for one day per month is a
requirement if one is to receive the benefits of universal and permanent
equanimity, and is an unique feature of the Rohinı̄ fast. Equanimity was
_
understood to be an integral part of Jain notions of perfection and the attain-
ment of liberation. Thus, any woman who can successfully perform this fast is
already accomplished in those liberation-directed (moksa-mārg) virtues of equa-
˙
nimity and austerity.
This fast works in three of the four major ways in which Jain women
circumvent the problem of merit transfer. First, the faster’s husband should
join his wife for the closing pūjā, make a substantial donation to his temple,
and throw a feast for the whole congregation at the completion of the fast.34
Second, for the duration of the fast, the husband and the rest of his family are
made aware of the piety of his wife each month for a little over seven and a half
years. Third, performing this fast is believed to garner the attention of the
guardian goddess, who will protect a woman and her happiness. The Rohinı̄
_
fast and the narrative suggest one further way to link the fast to a woman’s
saubhāgya through the protection of a woman’s equanimity and the prevention

of her sorrow; this strategy is one that circumvents the question of merit
transfer by maintaining the performer of the fast as the primary beneficiary
its merit. Thus, the Rohinı̄ fast prevents bad things from happening to the
_
faster, which would include anything that would damage her cherished status
as an auspicious wife. In the discourse of the Rohinı̄ fast, the identity of the
_
woman is fully eclipsed by her identity as a wife, so that protecting her is the
same as protecting her husband.35
Several Jain women told me very abbreviated versions of the Rohinı̄ story,
_
but they also referred me to satı̄ narrative collections for more complete
versions.36 The Rohinı̄ story is narrated in a popular published collection of
_
sermons, Upadeśaprasād (1993, vol. 5, 197–201), as follows.
ROHI NI¯ ’S STORY

_
In the city of Campapuri, King Maghavā and his wife, Queen Laksmı̄,
˙
had eight virtuous sons and also one daughter named Rohinı̄. Rohinı̄
_ _
was a lovely and auspicious child, and the king wanted a special groom
for her. The king’s advisors said that Rohinı̄ should marry prince
_
Aśok, and so a groom choice was arranged. Rohinı̄ and Aśok were
_
married and returned to his home, and he was soon made king. They
had eight sons and four daughters and they were happy for a long
time.
One day Rohinı̄ was looking out and saw a woman who was
_
wailing because her son had died. Rohinı̄ did not understand what
_
was going on—because she had never seen suffering—and asked her
husband: “Husband! What is kind of drama is that?” and the king
said: “Dear, don’t be arrogant!” Rohinı̄ then said: “I have wealth, youth,
_
husband, son, and father, and so forth, [because I have] all this, I am
filled with happiness. I am not being arrogant, but I have just never
seen this kind of drama before.” The king explained: “That woman’s
son has died, that is why she is crying,” and Rohinı̄ replied: “Where
_
does one learn how to act like that?” The king said, “Look, I will teach
you” and he threw their youngest son over the rampart. But Rohinı̄ did
_
not cry, and the king was amazed and disturbed. The goddess came
quickly and caught their son on a throne.
One day, two of the Jina Vāsupūjya’s disciple-monks,
Raupyakumbh and Suvarnakumbh, came to the city, and the king
_
came to pay homage to them. He asked them: “From what past karma
does my wife not experience any unhappiness?” and the monk told
him that in a past life his wife, Rohinı̄, performed the Rohinı̄ fast to
_ _
atone for feeding a monk polluted food, and because of this she cannot
experience sorrow.37 At the end of his narrative, the monk said:
“O King Aśok, the merit of this fast is such that from the very moment
of birth one does not experience sorrow or crying.” King Aśok, having
heard the story of his wife’s past life, became a model Jain layman and
enjoyed the rest of his blissful reign. After some time, Aśok and
Rohinı̄ went to the assembly hall of Lord Vasupūjya and became
_
mendicants. After performing fierce austerities, they attained
omniscience and then liberation.
In this narrative Rohinı̄ herself has no experience of sorrow, though she does
_
feel joy in the fulfillment of her social position as an auspicious wife. She has
the security of having a living father, husband, and son alongside wealth and
the good health and beauty implied by having her youth. Her life is perfect.
Aśok reprimands her for being arrogant about her good fortune; his reprimand
is echoed many times when contemporary Jains correct someone who speaks
too much of their good fortune, in order to prevent them from getting the evil
eye. In the story, Rohinı̄ does not even understand what Aśok means, because
_
her life is so completely free from sorrow. They have a one-sided fight, with
Aśok getting furious and Rohinı̄ not recognizing the negative emotions being
_
experienced by those around her. Aśok’s rash act of throwing his son off the
ramparts is tempered by the son’s miraculous rescue. Rohinı̄’s equanimity and
_
the rescue of her son are both attributed to Rohinı̄’s past performance of the
_
fast. The monk explains that Rohinı̄ will experience no sorrow—a statement of
_
both her equanimity and her luckiness.
In an abbreviated version of the Rohinı̄ story told to Laidlaw, we learn that
_
Rohinı̄ is impervious to sorrow of any kind: “As the result of austerities in a
_
previous birth, Rohini is an extremely fortunate woman. She never had any
kind of unhappiness” (Laidlaw 1995, 224).38 The story suggests that the fast
will produce a sense of emotional equanimity in the face of troubles and an
alleviation of troubles, as well. Rohinı̄’s husband punishes her for not having
_
the proper sentiment by killing their son (part of her security), but her religious
acts from a past life grant her equanimity in the face of tragedy. Her merit also
protects her happiness and future financial security by causing a guardian
goddess to save the life of her son. The miraculous rescue of their son
convinces the king that Rohinı̄ has some special karma, and for this reason
_
he seeks the story of her past lives from a monk. The story tells us a few things
about women’s piety.39 First, Rohinı̄’s performance of this fast in her past life
_
protects her, her husband, and their son in this life. Second, the terms of this
efficacy are centered around the protection of Rohinı̄’s equanimity and happi-
_
ness, rather than being framed around the effects it may have on her husband.
And finally, the story tells Jains that fidelity to religion will ultimately be
rewarded in this life and in future lives by marital happiness and recognition
of a wife’s authority and virtue in matters of religion.
The Rohinı̄ story provides the source for the important detail for the
_
performance of the fast, which is not found in the fasting manuals: one cannot
show displeasure, anger, or sorrow while performing this fast, or one cannot—
at the very least—show any indication of unhappiness (Laidlaw 1995, 224). If
one’s equanimity is broken, the fast is broken. Several women told me that this
rule convinced them that they should not start the fast. It was also expected that
on the rohinı̄ days, no one in the family should do anything that might upset
_
the faster, since the results of the fast benefit the entire family.40 For the fast to
be effective, the faster’s happiness and equanimity must be protected, therefore
nothing bad must happen to her. In this way, protecting the fasting woman’s
happiness protects the family.
The promise of the attainment of equanimity from the fast was something
Jains were happy to speak of publicly because, of course, equanimity is a
prerequisite to liberation and therefore sits neatly within normative liberation
ideologies. Laidlaw (1995, 225) was told by a Jain nun that the Rohinı̄ fast will
_
prevent one from feeling any “mental distress,” and she went on to say that
perhaps her own mother’s calm in the face of tragedy arises out of a perfor-
mance of this fast in a past life. I, too, was told that this fast led one to calm
equanimity. In one case, a woman told me that her mother-in-law’s peaceful
and unflappable demeanor was the direct result of having performed this fast.
Among Jain laywomen I spoke with, the Rohinı̄ fast was understood to be very
_
effective against long-term illness in oneself and one’s husband, but also
against the attendant worries of such an illness. In at least one case, this fast
was undertaken after a woman’s husband was diagnosed with cancer and the
woman felt it gave her the equanimity to face her increasingly likely widow-
hood.41 Women always named the benefits of equanimity and contentment as
one key result of the fast, but they also credited the Rohinı̄ fast with the
_
protection of a woman’s saubhāgya.
The Rohinı̄ fast instructions directly claim worldly benefits as a result of
_
the fast: “The fruits of this fast are never being a widow and the happiness of
auspicious wifehood” (Taporatna Mahodadhi, 114). It is in only a few Jain fasts
that the instructions actually name saubhāgya as a potential benefit; most Jain
fasting instructions state that the benefits of a fast are related to the progress of
the faster’s soul toward liberation. Contemporary Jains feel comfortable dis-
cussing these benefits directly in private (though most are hesitant to do so in
public).42 No doubt this rarity arises from the tension within the normative
Jain community between the liberation ideology, which promotes becoming a

mendicant as a means for achieving liberation, and the discourse of well-being,
which promotes merit making as a means for achieving a successful and
fruitful lay life and rebirth (Cort 2001b; Laidlaw 1995).43 And yet the claims
given in the Rohinı̄ fast instructions could not be clearer about the fast’s links
_
to saubhāgya.
Though Rohinı̄ fasting instructions state that the fast will prevent widow-
_
hood and promote marital happiness, it requires some analysis to tease out
how this happens. It is not immediately obvious how this claim and the details
of the story are linked. Rohinı̄ suggests a model that inverts our expectation
_
about how to attain saubhāgya by focusing on the protection of the woman
herself from suffering, which would mean that bad things—like widowhood,
loss of children, and so on-could not happen to her.44 The fasting narrative also
tells us that nothing bad could happen to Rohinı̄. Indeed, her equanimity when
_
her husband threw their son off the ramparts is protected by the fact that the
guardian goddess catches the son and thereby removes any cause for distress.
This shift toward the satı̄ being protected from bad things happening provides
a model of achieving equanimity that is more appealing than a simple philo-
sophical acceptance of misfortune as karmic fate as Sulasā suggested to her
husband. This model is key to the ways that contemporary laywomen under-
stood the efficacy of the Rohinı̄ fast and surely contributes to the popularity of
_
the fast. One woman who had performed this fast told me that it prevented her
from experiencing any misfortune. In light of marital problems, the story
suggests that women’s acts (now and in a past life) both create the equanimity
to sail through the storms of marital trouble without distress and prevent the
worst of marital troubles from happening at all.
Probably the best-known Hindu story of wifely devotion is that of Sāvitrı̄,
who follows her husband Satyavat into death. Her devotion to her husband is
rewarded with a boon (or three boons) from the god of death, Yama. He tells
her she can ask for anything, except to get her husband back. Cleverly, Sāvitrı̄
asks for a hundred sons, which Yama grants. Sāvitrı̄ points out that as a chaste
and virtuous woman she cannot have these sons unless her husband is
returned to her. This story is associated with a fast for the long life and
prosperity of husbands (Tewari 1991, 31–33). Much like Rohinı̄, Sāvitrı̄ uses
_
the protection of herself to protect the life of her husband. Hindu women who
perform the fast associated with the Sāvitrı̄ story, like the Jain women who
perform the Rohinı̄ fast, hope to use the protection of their status as auspicious
_
and virtuous wives to protect themselves and the lives of their husbands.
Jain wives, like other married women in South Asia, prioritize the health
and well-being of their husbands both as an act of wifely piety and in recogni-
tion of the centrality of that relationship for their own well-being. A woman’s
saubhāgya is the focus of a number of fasts and related practices. Jain women
use a variety of strategies discussed above to ensure that their husbands benefit
from their religious acts and thereby protect their saubhāgya. The Rohinı̄ fast
_
presents us with two ways of thinking about women’s saubhāgya practices: one,
a woman can prevent widowhood by performing the Rohinı̄ fast, and two, the
_
mechanism of this fast’s efficacy is to protect the woman from misfortune
(which is elided with widowhood). However, even a woman’s successful efforts
in protecting the life of her husband are no guarantee of her happiness;
women’s notions of well-being extend beyond simply having a living husband,
and it is to this concern that we now turn.
3
Jain Satı̄s, Women’s Agency,
and Bad Marriages
Jain satı̄ narratives provide a corpus of directives for maintaining

well-being and resolving marital difficulties through Jain piety. In these
stories, satı̄s use their piety strategically to alleviate conflicts and solve
marital troubles. Although Jain rituals work on the level of karma
reduction and merit making, the stories suggest that piety also works
by proving a woman’s virtue and convincing her husband and his family
to support, rather than reject her. This chapter centers around two
stories, Subhadrā and Añjanā, which I commonly heard, but which
were not associated with particular rituals.1 In essence, the power of
these stories comes from their proposition that generic piety (rather
than particular rituals) will solve a woman’s problems. Their popularity
seems to arise from their propositions about women’s agency and
the narrative recognition of those concerns and fears that Jain
women—like women in other communities—face in their married
lives. Because of the centrality of marital happiness for the overall social
and economic well-being of a Jain married woman, it is unsurprising
that Jain women synthesize the discourses of Jainism and Indian
wifehood, developing a blueprint of the agency for making the
decisions that affect their lives and those of the people around them.
A variety of marital difficulties for women are neatly resolved in
Jain satı̄ stories, which set the wife at the center of action and as the
primary agent of efficacy of rituals. In these stories, in short, women
control their fates through their ritual practices. Satı̄ stories work
together with ritual practices and ritual texts to provide a foundation on
which wives may build their pativratā practices when saubhāgya is the greatest
concern, but these stories promise more than lessons in pativratā practices; they
promise happy marriages, good fortune, recognition of a woman’s virtue, and
ultimate reward (either heaven or liberation) as the result of Jain piety.
Marital happiness was defined for me by Jain laywomen on many occa-
sions. When I speak of marital happiness, I mean something greater than the
common definition of saubhāgya, good fortune, which marks a woman as
fortunate if she has a living husband regardless of the quality of the marriage
that is experienced by her. Women spoke of saubhāgya as the starting point—
acknowledging the basic socioeconomic importance of having a living hus-
band. Though saubhāgya, in this simple sense, is still key to a woman’s basic
support in the patriarchal context of South Asia, recent scholars of Hindu
women have begun to explore the wider possibilities of women’s desires and
needs within marriage.2 After naming saubhāgya, Jain women added further
considerations for marital happiness including: emotional and sexual intimacy
with one’s husband, peaceful relationship with one’s husband, harmony with
one’s husband’s family, children, economic prosperity, and some combination
of love and romance.
Obviously not all marriages are happy at all times, and women discussed
with each other, and with me, strategies to fix bad marriages.3 There were
socioeconomic and sociopolitical answers to family resource and labor distri-
bution problems and medical suggestions for lack of children, but these
solutions often took the potential agency out of the woman’s hands by assign-
ing authority to someone else—usually male—to negotiate or make decisions
on behalf of the woman’s interests.4 Women did have certain recourses; a
woman could return to her natal home as leverage to improve her married
life or, less commonly, she could use her own assets (money gained by selling
her personal jewelry or money given to her by her natal family) to alleviate their
financial suffering. In intolerable marriages, there is the possibility of divorce
or returning to one’s parents’ house indefinitely—a de facto divorce. Alongside
these strategies, women also suggested to each other religious strategies—
fasts, worship ceremonies, pilgrimages, and so on—that might create the
desired results. In these religious solutions, women are granted the agency
to make decisions about what to do at each step of the act, and the acts
themselves bind merit to her directly. These religious acts were often per-
formed by the woman on her own behalf (like the Rohinı̄ fast), locating the
_
power of the acts within her own abilities to act. Within the predominantly
mercantile Jain community, whose business and marriage practices are based
on notions of virtue, moral virtue has very real socioeconomic effects. Because
of the centrality of virtue, Jain women can use their piety strategically to gain
JAIN SATĪS , WOMEN ’ S AGENCY, AND BAD MARRIAGES 57
power in their marital homes and also gain power for their marital homes,
powers that they can convert into changes toward their ideal marriage.
Many women I observed used some combination of externalizing strate-
gies and consolidating religious rituals to change their unhappiness to happi-
ness. When the desired result arose, it was usually attributed to the religious
act rather than the mundane one. Even if the solution was clearly linked to a
mundane act, the efficacy of the mundane act was still linked to the ritual acts
performed by the woman, reframing even the most externalized acts as a result
of the woman’s piety. For example, one young woman whose marriage arrange-
ments were not going well finally agreed to use a Jain wedding service group to
help her family meet suitable young men, while at the same time she per-
formed a major fast and worship ceremony. Her marriage was soon success-
fully arranged, which she attributed to the fast. When I asked about the
wedding service, she said that it would not have been fruitful without the
worship. She felt that she was able to change her status through her own
acts and get her desired results; Jain discourse on karma theory and piety
supports her claim. In satı̄ narratives, the problems that may arise within
marriage are a backdrop for a discussion about the satı̄’s agency and the
efficacy of her acts. These stories assert the potential of women’s virtue to fix
even the most seemingly intractable marital problems.
Satı̄ Narratives and Strategies for Creating Marital Happiness
In the most intimate conversations with Jain women, there arose a pattern of
particular concerns about marriage. The fears centered around bad marriage
arrangements, infertility, abandonment and other forms of rejection by one’s
husband (including—the least overtly discussed area—male adultery), and
rejection by one’s in-laws, especially one’s mother-in-law. We will see in the
stories of Subhadrā and Añjanā how good wives use their virtue to control their
fates and fix their bad marriages. Their fasts and piety allow them to gain good
husbands or transform bad husbands into good ones, to have much-desired
(and socially required) sons, to regain the love of their husbands, to gain the
respect of their in-laws, and to lead to a general illumination of the greatness of
Jainism, which converts others to the religion.
Jain satı̄ narratives are similar to ritual narratives (vrat kathā) recited in
conjunction with Hindu women’s fasts. In these Hindu narratives we find a
similar set of problems solved through the wife’s devotion (to a deity or a ritual
practice). In chapter 2 we saw how the Rohinı̄ fast protects a woman’s happi-
_
ness and therefore protects her husband’s life, which is key to her happiness.
The primary concern in Hindu saubhāgya fasting narratives is likewise to

prevent widowhood (recall the Savitrı̄ story and its accompanying fast), but
other Hindu ritual stories center around marital happiness. For example, the
story associated with the fast at Tı̄j tells how Pārvatı̄ is able to arrange her own
marriage by practicing intense fasting and asceticism until her marriage is
arranged with Śiva (McGee 1987, 230–231; Tewari 1991, 34–36). The Ciraiyā
Gaur fast is performed to make a husband love a wife; its accompanying story
tells us that when a woman performed this fast her husband stopped beating
her and began to love her (Tewari 1991, 65–66). In others, such as the recently
popular Santosi Mā fast and its accompanying story, fasting promises intimacy
˙
with one’s husband (in particular a separate home), good relationships with
one’s husband’s family, and overall familial well-being alongside protection of a
husband’s health and long life (Pearson 1996, 177). But most of the Hindu
fasting narratives collected speak of preventing widowhood and/or poverty
through the power of asceticism and the boons of pleased deities.5
Although the Jain stories of Subhadrā and Añjanā were less frequently told
than those of Jain satı̄s focused on in other chapters, these stories were popularly
portrayed in the edifying literature that many laywomen read and were occasion-
ally retold as stories of good women for groups of women. These Jain satı̄ stories
resemble Hindu fasting narratives (vrat kathā) with the addition of the compet-
ing discourse of renunciation and Jain liberation (moksa-mārg) ideology. Though
˙
the two stories in this chapter do not have links to rituals—as do most of the
other Jain satı̄ narratives I discuss in this book—the widespread knowledge of
these stories suggests their significance as narratives of desire and agency.
Subhadrā
Of the two stories given in this chapter, Subhadrā’s was more commonly told to
me. I heard brief versions of this story on countless occasions told to me by
young unmarried laywomen, married laywomen and, on occasion, nuns. Sub-
hadrā’s story centers around three of the worst possible problems that could
arise in the early years of a marriage: deceit in wedding arrangements, conflicts
with the marital family over religion, and accusations of infidelity or shame-
lessness. (This last will be discussed later in the chapter.) These are fears young
unmarried women named during the period in which their marriage is being
arranged, and the story was most often told by and to unmarried women. The
version below is drawn from a printed version, Mahāsatı̄ Subhadrā Tathā
Rājı̄matı̄, in Vı̄rasenavijayjı̄ Ganivarya’s satı̄ narrative series Mahāsatı̄, which
_
was circulating from 2000 to 2002 among the Jain women with whom
I worked.6
¯ ’S STORY
SUBHADRA
Subhadrā was born into a good Jain family—the daughter of the king’s
minister. Subhadrā was very religious, and her father wanted to marry
her to a religious Jain of a good family. One day a young Buddhist man
named Buddhadās was visiting her city, saw Subhadrā, and fell in love.
Buddhadās found out that Subhadrā’s family was looking for a good
Jain husband for her, so he changed his name to Jinadās and
pretended to be a Jain. He stayed with some Jain monks, claiming to
take a vow to live temporarily like a monk in order to impress
Subhadrā’s father. Jinadās/Buddhadās met her father and lied to him
about all the Jain vows he supposedly had taken. Subhadrā’s father was
fooled and decided to marry Subhadrā to Jinadās/Buddhadās.
In all the excitement of her new life, Subhadrā did not
immediately realize that her in-laws were not Jains. One morning,
Subhadrā went to worship at the Jain temple. When she returned, her
mother-in-law told her that her new family were not Jains, but
Buddhists, and that from now on Subhadrā must only worship at
Buddhist temples. In defiance, Subhadrā continued to worship at the
Jain temple and pay homage to Jain monks.
One day a Jain monk who had been fasting for a full month came
for alms to break his fast. The monk was in pain because of a piece of
straw caught in his eye. Subhadrā wanted to help the monk, so she
removed the straw from his eye with her tongue; her red forehead
mark stuck to the monk’s forehead. When her mother-in-law saw the
red mark on the forehead of the monk she said to Jinadās/Buddhadās:
“Look son! What kind of wife acts like this? She is shameless and that
monk is filled with lust.” Thus the mother-in-law stirred up trouble.
Jinadās/Buddhadās believed that Subhadrā was disgraceful and
beyond any hope of redemption. Subhadrā was uncertain what to do,
so she vowed that she would stay in meditation (kāyotsarga) until her
name was cleared. The guardian goddess came to her and said: “Hey,
daughter, tomorrow morning your disgrace will be banished. I will
speak as a voice from the sky. Do exactly what I say,” and then the
goddess left.
The next morning no one could open the gates to the city. The
king asked for any ideas, and out of the sky came a voice saying: “O
king! Don’t worry. Once a true woman (satı̄ strı̄ ) draws water from this
well with a sieve on a weak cotton thread and throws it at the gate, then
the gates will open.” After the king heard this he called for all true
women to come and try to open the gate. No one could keep water in
the sieve. Everyone began to worry. Subhadrā told her mother-in-law
that she would open the gate. Her mother-in-law became very angry
and said: “O sinful woman! In just one act, you have already shamed
our family, what more do you want?” Subhadrā humbly said: “I will
ask the sky-goddess. If she says ‘yes,’ I shall go open the gate.” Just
then a voice came from the sky: “Go open that gate!” Having heard
this, Subhadrā went through the crowds of thousands of men and
women. She drew water from the well with a sieve on a weak cotton
thread and threw it on the gate. Three of the gates unlocked
miraculously, but the fourth was left. The guardian goddess
announced to the crowd: “I will only open the last gate when a true
woman comes before me.” Subhadrā came to bow before the goddess
and the gate opened. Everyone saw the miracle. Then the mother-in-
law asked for Subhadrā’s forgiveness, and her husband’s family
converted to Jainism. At the end of her life, Subhadrā became a nun,
destroyed her karma by fasting, and attained liberation. (Mahāsatı̄
Subhadrā Tathā Rājı̄matı̄, no date, 61–66)
Pearson (1996, 248) was told a similar story by high-caste Hindu women in
Banaras. This story was associated with the Jiutiyā fast, in which it is a sister—
rather than a wife—whose virtue is tested. In the Jiutiyā story, the sister was
required to prove her virtue to her brothers by carrying water in a sieve and she
could not do it, so she sat weeping. The deities Śiva and Pārvatı̄ felt pity for the
woman and sealed the holes in the sieve, making it possible for her to carry the
water. This Hindu story hinges on divine intervention rather than miraculous
virtue. Although the sister’s virtue could have drawn the attention of the deities,
they are said to address her because she is crying, demonstrating their compas-
sion rather than her virtue. In contrast, even when the goddess is most involved
in the Subhadrā story, it is always Subhadrā’s virtue that permits her to pass the
test and, having demonstrated her virtue, fix her bad marriage. Though the
goddess prepares the test for Subhadrā and informs her that there will be a test,
Subhadrā passes that test without any divine intervention or magic.
In shorter versions of the Subhadrā story, the goddess’s role is further
attenuated. When one Tapā Gacch nun told me the abbreviated story, she said:
“Subhadrā cleaned the monk’s eye with her tongue and removed the dirt that
got in it. Her forehead mark stuck to him and everyone started talking, since
the monk had just been to her house. Later when everyone was locked out,
from the heavens, the goddess said: ‘Whoever can bring water in a sieve and
throw it on the door, will open it.’ Subhadrā could do it and from this everyone
knew she was a satı̄.”7 It is Subhadrā’s innate virtue that allows her to miracu-
lously open the gates. Another Tapā Gacch nun who was sitting near by later
added that Subhadrā had done the eight-day fast (Aththaı̄ upvās), locating the
_ _
success of Subhadrā’s test in her own religious practices rather than exclusively
in her wifely virtue. In her discussion on the links between laywomen’s piety
and that of nuns in the Terāpanthı̄ community, Vallely retells the story of
Subhadrā. In her version, Subhadrā vows to fast, reciting the Navkār mantra
until her reputation is repaired. It is her resolve that gains the attention of the
goddess who proposed the challenge. She undertakes the challenge of the sieve
while reciting the Navkār mantra (Vallely 2002, 230–231). In Vallely’s version, it
is Subhadrā’s fast and the efficacy of the Navkār mantra that allow her to prove
herself.8 In all cases, it is Subhadrā’s virtue or her pious religious practices that
make the miraculous possible; the goddess merely sets the stage. These other
tellings of the Subhadrā story rely on strategies similar to those discussed in
chapter 2: fasting and the religiomagic practices associated with the Navkār
mantra, rather than potentially capricious divine intervention. Subhadrā’s story
draws our attention to two marital problems I will discuss directly—bad mar-
riage arrangements and religious differences—and a third, accusations of
shamelessness, which I will discuss after introducing Añjanā’s story.
Bad Marriage Arrangements

Subhadrā’s story was often told to me by young unmarried women whose
marriage arrangements were in process. The story reflects the kinds of fears
that this group of women might have about their soon-to-be-determined future
married lives. Subhadrā’s father made a poor marriage choice—having been
fooled by appearances—and she is now married into a Buddhist family, and to
a husband who would lie, even about vows, in order to get his way.9 Although
young women whose marriages were being arranged have mostly expressed to
me concerns about whether they will fit into their new home and how much
they will miss their families, these women did voice concerns about deception,
learned from the accounts of friends’ and acquaintances’ marriage arrange-
ments. Stories of deceived parents were repeatedly referenced by young
women when marriage arrangements were being discussed.
Although the older generation exert considerable energy on determining
whether or not the groom’s family is representing themselves accurately, it
is assumed that some relatively benign blurring of the facts might go on; educa-
tional achievements and financial prospects might be slightly exaggerated and
appearance adjusted to conform to norms. Love matches and familial conflicts
might be obscured, but these issues are the focus of much research.10 Families
watch carefully for any signs of false representation about scandals.11 Subhadrā’s
father’s choice resonates with their fear that the groom’s family might grossly
misrepresent themselves and that one’s own parents might be fooled by appear-
ances until it is too late. The story instructs the young women, if they find
themselves in this position, to be firm in their religion, and all will work out for
them. Some marital problems can be resolved through the use of strategic piety,
but Subhadrā first needs to protect her ability to practice Jainism at all.
Religious Differences
Subhadrā’s troubles continue after her marriage, as her mother-in-law prohi-
bits Jain worship, which Subhadrā feels she cannot give up. Tensions over the
religious practices between natal and marital homes are real. Though most
Jain women marry into Jain families with the same sectarian identity, some-
times women in the smaller communities (such as Sthānakavāsı̄s) are married
into the dominant community (Murtı̄pūjak), whose practices differ significant-
ly.12 Nowadays, most parents take into account the sectarian identity of the
families and the degree of religiosity of the two children, but as long as both are
Jain these are lesser concerns compared to financial, educational, and overall
family character considerations. Even in the best-matched arrangements, there
are differences in the style and level of commitment between a bride’s natal and
affinal homes. After marriage, there is also a shift from the relatively self-
determined religious practices of an unmarried young woman to the expected
religious behavior of married women, and in particular, married women of a
new lineage.13 Unmarried young women begin to perform some of the prac-
tices associated with married women, but in a periodic and experimental way.
The new vows, food restrictions, levels of temple attendance, and household
rites are linked to the shift of expectations from daughters to wives and disrupt
a young woman’s sense of comfort derived from her familiar worship just as
she leaves the comfort and protection of her natal home and its practices.
Regardless of whether the young woman is more or less religious than her
marital family, accommodation of her religious differences can be central to
her marital happiness, especially when her personal practices are linked to her
sense of her own control over that marital status. One newly married woman
told me that it was difficult to adjust to her more religious marital home,
because she did not know how to cook the more restricted foods and was not
interested in religion, which was a major topic of discussion among the
women in her affinal home. On the other hand, another newly married
woman told me that she was very sad because since she married she no longer
performed a full pūjā every day (she was expected to be home helping with the
morning work) and because the men in her affinal home ate onions, which are
proscribed for Jains and which her more orthodox natal family did not eat or
cook. In both cases, being religious was highly valued. The more religious
woman was able to argue that performing rituals was part of the labor of wives,
and ultimately secured more time for her worship. The less religious woman
continues to search for aspects of religion in which she has interest and could
become well versed. The adjustment to the religious life of married women
directs the young women ultimately toward taking a greater role in religious
practices, even if the labor of early child rearing may diminish the time
available for the practices for some years. The marital families in both cases
began to accept the particular religious styles and interests of these two women
over time, easing some of the tension, too.
Acceptance of a woman’s religiosity can be central to her happiness. One
Jain woman who had a “love marriage” into a Hindu family attributed her
husband’s success to her continued Jain worship after her marriage. But she
attributed her marital happiness to the fact that her in-laws permitted her to
continue to identify as Jain and uphold basic Jain values in her new home. Her
belief that her acts benefit her marital family resolved some of her concerns
about having a different religious identity from her husband and his family. The
story of Subhadrā suggests that a young woman can virtuously defy these
changes, be rewarded, and ultimately recognized as virtuous, if she is being
steadfastly Jain. Subhadrā breaks a key social expectation that a new bride
conform to the religious practices of her husband’s family. Subhadrā ultimately
converts her in-laws so that she is now married into a good Jain family, as she
should have been from the start.14 Were Subhadrā less religious than her in-
laws, the narrative could not posit her as a moral ideal, but as one who steadfastly
maintains her religion against social pressure, she is a satı̄ and a good wife.
This story tells us a few things about Jain piety. One, Jain piety should be
upheld even if it comes into conflict with social requirements. Two, Jain piety will
be rewarded with both spiritual gain and worldly happiness. Three, the virtues of a
good daughter-in-law can be channeled into the conversion of her husband’s
lineage, leading to well-being and ultimately liberation for them. And, finally,
four, one’s own religious acts can directly change one’s situation, turning flawed
or bad marriages into ideal ones. With this in mind, we turn to the story of Añjanā.
Añjanā Sundarı̄
The story of Añjanā was widely known through the proliferation of Jain
religious publications.15 Contemporary Jain women referenced this story in
the context of their reflections on marital problems. The Añjanā story intro-
duces a number of additional marital problems that will be discussed in turn:

(1) rejection by husband; (2) childlessness and miraculous fertility; (3) accusa-
tions of shamelessness; and (4) conflicts with one’s mother-in-law. The story
suggests a particular anxiety about being rejected by one’s husband and his
family and accused of adultery. A brief examination of the Añjanā story will
frame my discussions on these problems among contemporary Jain laywom-
an. Below is a condensed version of Añjanā’s story drawn from a book, Ek
Managamatı̄ Vārtā: Añjanā Sundarı̄ Caritra-Sacitra, which was circulating dur-
ing the months of my research for this book.
¯ ’S STORY
˜ JANA
AN
Añjanā was married to Pavanañjay, but before the marriage was

consummated, Pavanañjay overheard a conversation that led him to
reject Añjanā: one of Añjanā’s friends said that her husband was better
than Pavanañjay.16 Añjanā’s best friend defended Pavanañjay, but
Añjanā remained silent throughout the argument between her
friends. Pavanañjay interpreted Añjanā’s silence as a kind of rejection
and was so insulted that he did not come to her on their wedding night
to consummate the marriage. Añjanā tried to figure out what she had
done (in this life or a past life) that made her new husband indifferent
to her. Her friends told her to complain, but she refused, saying that
this was her fate and that she would stay at her in-laws and love him
regardless of his rejection of her. Añjanā lived her married life without
ever even seeing her husband once. Pavanañjay, who was a virtuous
man in spite of his behavior toward his wife, also led a celibate life,
and so twenty-one years passed by.
Pavanañjay went to war and left Añjanā without a word, rejecting
even her wifely farewell blessing. Añjanā began a strict fast to correct the
bad karma that had led to her unhappy fate. The night before the battle,
Pavanañjay heard the pitiful wailing of a bird mourning its beloved. He
felt pity for his wife and returned to see her for the first time. He arrived
secretly at night, and the marriage was then consummated. Pavanañjay
left in the morning without seeing his parents, but before he left, Añjanā
asked him how she could prove herself virtuous if she turned out to be
pregnant. Pavanañjay said that he could not admit to having come back
from the battle or he would be called a coward. However, he gave her a
ring and told her to keep it safe in case of an absolute emergency.
Añjanā, who had amassed significant power (śakti) from the
austerities of being celibate for twenty-one years, conceived a child
that night. When her pregnancy became visible, people started to talk.
Pavanañjay’s parents did not believe her story and when she showed
them the ring, they claimed that she had stolen it. They drove her from
their house in shame, thinking she was adulterous, and sent her back
to her parent’s house. When Añjanā’s father heard that she was
pregnant [presumably with an illegitimate child], he barred her from
her natal palace. She and her best friend wandered the jungles until
the child was born. When Añjanā’s maternal uncle (māmā) heard that
she was in the jungle, he insisted that she come live with him until
Pavanañjay returned. When Pavanañjay did return, he was devastated
to hear that she had been thrown out of the house and searched
everywhere. When he gave up on finding her alive, he went to burn
himself to death on a funeral pyre in atonement for sending Añjanā to
her death. At the last second, his father came and told him that Añjanā
was living with her uncle, and they went to fetch her. Once they found
Añjanā, she immediately forgave everyone, saying that all this
suffering was on account of her past karma. They lived happily
ever after, renounced at the end of their lives, and attained liberation.
(Ek Managamatı̄ Vārtā: Añjanā Sundarı̄ Caritra-Sacitra 1993)
Añjanā accepted her loveless marriage as her fate, but when her husband
refused her the right to protect him (through the farewell blessing) she
began a severe fast.17 Pavanañjay’s refusal to consummate their marriage is a
rejection of the proper intimacy between a married couple, but his refusal to
accept her farewell blessing is a rejection of her status as his wife. It is then that
Añjanā starts to take control of her marriage by performing a fast, which
results in Pavanañjay’s decision to consummate his marriage. One unmarried
young woman told me the Añjanā story as follows: “For twenty-one years her
husband didn’t come to her and from that austerity she was able to conceive in
one night. Still no one believed her until her husband returned and then they
knew she was a satı̄.” Even in this condensed version we see some of the key
concerns women have about marriage problems.
In Vimalasūri’s version, which serves as the base story from which this
telling is drawn, Pavanañjay suspects that Añjanā was in love with someone else
before their marriage and thus rejects her (Canto 16). In Vimalasūri’s telling, the
concerns over the purity of the bride are central to Pavanañjay’s worries about his
marriage, but rather than accuse her of this infidelity, he simply rejects her. In
Vālmı̄ki’s Rāmāyana (Kiskindha Kānda 66), Añjanā, who is married to the
_ ˙ __
monkey Kesarin, is grabbed by Vāyu, the god of the wind. Vāyu seduces her
with promises of a semidivine son, and thus Hanumān was conceived. In the
Hindu story, it is Añjanā’s infidelity that blesses her with her son Hanumān,
rather than her accumulated power from celibacy. Contemporary Jain tellings
never suggest the possibility—even if only in the eyes of Pavanañjay—that
Añjanā is unfaithful.18 The episode shifts from questions of Añjanā’s fidelity
in Vimalasūri’s version to a reconfiguration of Añjanā in which her friends
assume the guilt of the discussion, and even that discussion centers around
Pavanañjay’s piety in the contemporary popular renditions. This shift may arise
partly from the differing understanding of women’s religiosity in Vimalasūri’s
time period and that of contemporary Śvetāmbar views, but seems to me to
indicate a strategy to maximize Añjanā’s virtue as a Jain satı̄. The further her
story gets from the Rāmāyana, the more it stresses her virtues as a satı̄.19
_
Intimacy and Rejection

Within the discourse of arranged marriages, fear that one will be rejected by
one’s new husband abounds. This rejection may take several forms: not com-
ing to one’s wife to consummate their marriage, growing tired of coming to
one’s wife, or not indicating any affection to one’s wife in private or in public.20
The satı̄ narratives attribute a husband’s rejection of his wife mostly to unjust
accusations of shamelessness and infidelity or, in a few cases, to a general
rejection of marriage and wives as the mark of worldly life to be renounced.21
In conversations with married men, I have also heard less specific complaints
about wives: that the wives have bad temperaments, that the couple is ill-suited
to each other, or that a wife is lazy. These complaints, however, are not
reproduced in Jain stories. Nor are satı̄s actually guilty of infidelity (as Añjanā
is in Vālmı̄ki’s Rāmāyana); they are falsely accused and then they prove their
_
virtue. Even the accusing mothers-in-law usually accuse from a reasonable
misunderstanding rather than from malice.
The story of Añjanā illustrates the perils of a couple meeting before the
wedding is completed. The possibility that things will go sour between a couple
was a subject of concern among older Jains who observed the shift toward
engaged couples having a short courtship before marriage. The tensions lie
between the ideal couple who meet at their wedding (and then of necessity and
opportunity make their marriage work) and the “love match” encouraged by
films, television serials, and magazines. The rise of romance in the media can
justify itself by pointing back to the great romances of Indian classical litera-
ture and the royal prerogative of the “self-choice” (svayamvara) marriage, in
which the princess chooses her husband from a crowd of suitors.22 These
media are all quite popular with the young middle-class Jain women with
whom I conduct research. Increasingly, television serials dominate their free
time.23 The negotiation of expectations between the “traditional” ideology of

the gift of the virgin who knows nothing about the groom (kanyā dān) and the
“modern” discourses of romance and desire adds tension to the unstable period
between engagement and marriage, and sometimes extends into the early
months of marriage.
After marriage, the budding romance between a husband and wife is often
seen rhetorically as a threat to familial solidarity, because the husband may side
with his wife over his father’s lineage in disputes, and he might choose to
separate his nuclear family from the household (Bennett 1983, 219; Raheja
1995, 36–37). But for newly married brides, this very intimacy is often their
desire. Raheja (1995, 43–50) found this hope for intimacy with one’s husband
expressed in songs through the sign of the fan, which represents sexual
intimacy and is given in their dowry. If the husband feels close to his new
wife, he may support her interests or, in worse situations, he may protect her
from abuse or injustice by her in-laws. It is for this very reason that new wives
look for signs of growing affection, which might indicate an advance in their
social and emotional security in the unfamiliar world of the marital home. For
a woman’s natal family, signs of the growing intimacy between their daughter
and her husband are sought in order to assure the woman’s parents that their
daughter will be happy (Raheja 1995, 50); they will subtly—and sometimes not
so subtly—question the new bride about her sex life with her husband.
Although the husband’s family may be concerned about romance separating
the son from his family, I have heard older men and women voice concerns
about the risk that the couple do not grow to love each other. Despite the
concerns voiced by grooms’ families about familial solidarity and the persistent
risk of smaller family units separating from the group, the troubles that arise
from an unhappy couple were always named as worse: no children, strife in the
home, inauspiciousness, and the potential for infidelity.24
Although public physical displays of affection are not the norm in the Jain
communities, there are public markers of affection by husbands for their
wives: bringing her gifts, preferring her cooking, bringing her out to events,
going on private outings, indicating her knowledge of one’s business, and
intimacy with her brothers. Public gifts and private outings are the strongest
markers of public affection, because both indicate that one’s husband is using
family resources (money or labor) to please his wife. Raheja and Gold likewise
found that gifts, particularly of veils and fans, were markers of sexual intimacy
between husbands and wives in north India (Raheja and Gold 1994, 30–72;
Raheja 1995, 43–52). These kinds of private gifts from one’s husband were
understood to be intimate enough that women tended only to show me the
gifts after securing a promise that I would not tell other relatives that their
husband had given it to them; gifts of affection were often hidden until after a
woman returns from her natal home, where the gift is then produced as if it
were a gift from her natal relatives. For women, it is harder to show any public
affection and, because the affection is assumed, it signifies less. Restrictions
about speech and decorum prevent statements or physical gestures of affection
in any remotely public setting. However, women do show affection for their
husbands through attention to their likes and dislikes—making their favorite
foods—and showing preference for the gifts from their husbands. In small
groups, women will often affectionately tease their husbands as long as no
elder in-laws are present. Day-to-day involvement in one’s husband’s business
is likewise seen as public proof of private intimacy.
Affection in private includes both sexual and emotional intimacy. The
restrictions against public displays of intimacy between husband and wife
are in no way expected to extend to the private spaces of marriage. Over the
last fifteen years, women told me about late-night conversations about personal
hopes, worries, and ambitions as a mark of the intimacy they had with their
husbands. Occasionally women mentioned playing games (especially, cowries
and carom) with their husbands. Conversations and playing games are also
euphemisms for sexual intimacy and illustrate the interconnectedness of these
kinds of intimacy in marriage. Sexuality is an expected pleasure of marriage,
understood to be an important marker of marital happiness, and, frankly,
necessary for the continuity of the family line. I found there was quite a bit
of good-natured joking about sexuality among married women—though not in
front of one’s own mother-in-law—and women shared a vocabulary of euphe-
misms for sexual intimacy and romance that were widely referenced and
accompanied by much mirth. A woman can show private affection for her
husband by indicating availability for sexual encounters (for example, by
arranging for their children to sleep elsewhere or offering to give him a
massage), giving support to her husband when he experiences familial conflict,
and disclosing personal feelings and history.
Wholesale public rejection of one’s wife, as we find in the Añjanā story, is
scandalous, and I have only observed one marriage to dissolve in this dramatic
way.25 Public displays of infidelity were virtually unheard of—though it may
happen—because of the social stigma for both families.26 Less total rejections of
a wife can be publicly marked in subtle ways: eating out, leaving one’s wife
unaware of one’s schedule, not inviting a wife to an event, forgetting to bring a
wife to a promised event, or slighting one’s wife’s relations.27 Should any one of
these occur, a wife will feel rejected, and should it become a common practice,
real concerns will develop about the marriage within their families. Individual
acts of rejection were commonly covered up by wives, because to admit them
would make them even more vulnerable by drawing attention to their husbands’
lack of attention. Women rarely rejected their husbands in any public way unless
the situation seemed intolerable; any woman who publicly rejects her husband
will be assumed to be a bad wife unless his public behavior is seen to warrant
rejection. However, if some of the conditions of marriage are intolerable, women
can go to their natal families and refuse to return until some of their demands
are met.28 Though few women take such extreme measures, a husband’s public
acts of rejection were often the grounds for private marital conflict.
Private rejection can be even more painful for a wife, because it occurs
without the public eye of his family, which might otherwise censure the
husband for his neglect.29 Unsurprisingly, because of the links between sexual
and emotional intimacy, one common euphemism for sexual activities is “talk”
(bāt cı̄t).30 Silence from a husband is devastating to a wife. These rejections are
especially painful for a new wife who is hoping for a loving relationship and
who is left particularly vulnerable to abuse in her new home. When a husband
and wife are estranged, the burden of proof of virtue lies with the woman.
A close relationship with her husband is often a new wife’s best protection
from criticism or other injustices in her marital home, especially before she
bears children. Narayan (1997, 76) likewise found that women in Kangra
believed that a husband’s protection and affection are achieved through a
couple’s intimacy. A lack of sexual intimacy would prevent her from bearing
the very children that could cement her position in the family should her
husband or in-laws have a conflict with her. A wife may likewise choose to
perform private acts of rejection in response to a husband’s rejection or because
she is unhappy in her marriage. These acts range from small acts, like giving
him bad food—for example, over-salting his food or serving cold or stale food—
to larger acts like refusing sexual access or speech. In my observation, because
the stakes for conflict with one’s husband are so high and husbands have
greater power, women often channeled their anger at their husbands away
from their husbands toward their children or other members of their marital
family. In any case, though a certain amount of conflict is assumed in mar-
riages, overall intimacy between a husband and wife is seen to mitigate the
potential escalation of these conflicts into rejection.
The Perils of In/Fertility

Childlessness is of central concern to most of the laywomen I have interviewed.
The importance of children as emotional support and as status consolidators to
women when they are integrating into their marital home, and of sons as
financial support for old age cannot be overstated. To have no children is seen
as a terrible fate to be avoided at nearly any cost. Women often cited other
women’s childlessness as the state of greatest sorrow and vulnerability. I have not
heard of any woman being divorced because of barrenness, but there is a
lingering fear that barrenness will lead to her being rejected emotionally and
sexually. Having no children leaves a wife outside of her husband’s lineage and
makes her vulnerable to criticism about her family loyalties (Wadley 1995, 114).
In addition, without children there are realistic concerns about financial and
emotional security in one’s old age, and the childless couple often has less say in
familial matters, because they are understood to be less invested in the future of
the family. The worst state, of course, is that of the childless widow, and for all
childless wives, this specter is ever-present. Once a wife becomes a mother—
especially of a son—it is felt that she has security against the worst kind of
widowhood.31 Without intimacy with her husband, a woman faces the full range
of fears about childlessness alongside the sorrow of an unhappy marriage.
For most women, their first pregnancy and then the birth of a first child
mark their full participation in their husband’s lineage (Dhruvarajan 1989, 119).
The birth of a son makes the bond even stronger.32 Añjanā’s pregnancy is
practically miraculous; she conceives in just one nightly visit from her husband
after twenty-one years of celibacy. For Añjanā, however, accusations of adultery
destroy any potential of her pregnancy to bring her a sense of security in her
marital home. In fact, it leads her in-laws to reject her completely. For Añjanā,
the affection of her husband would have indicated to the family that a child
would eventually come, preparing the ground for their believing Añjanā’s story.
Children are read as an indicator of marital intimacy and a sign that the
marriage is going well. Even married women with whom I felt comfortable
discussing the possibility of birth control dismissed this option, saying that the
couple had no son and therefore would not be using any. After a couple I know
well had not conceived for three years (by using birth control, a choice they
made without discussion with the extended family), I was told that they were
not getting along well. When I asked what made people feel that way, I was told
over and over: “There are no children.” When I retold the story to the wife, she
laughed and said she’d tell her husband that he better take her out more often
to reassure his family. He did make several public gestures of affection, but
within three months she was pregnant, suggesting that the talk about them
made them reconsider their decision.33 Though anecdotal, this story illustrates
the clear connection between child bearing, perceived marital happiness, and
the position of a daughter-in-law.
On the other hand, miraculous fertility can become the site of accusations
of infidelity. For example, in the well-known puranic story of Ganapatı̄’s
_
beheading, Śiva accuses his wife Pārvatı̄ of adultery when he returns and
finds her son Ganapatı̄ guarding the door of her chambers (Śiva Purāna
_ _
2.4.13.15–32). The theme of the virtuous woman wrongly accused of adultery by

her in-laws is a common motif in Hindu narratives. In the story of the Sword
Husband, a woman is married by trickery to a sword. But, miraculously and
secretly, the sword changes into a husband at night. After she becomes
pregnant, she is accused of shamelessness, which is only resolved when her
husband displays himself to the village (Gold 1995b, 443–446).34 In a story
associated with the Hindu fast of Sakath (Ganeś Cauth) there are striking
_
parallels with the story of Añjanā: a wife is wrongly accused of infidelity after
she conceives a child during one secret visit from her husband. Her mother-in-
law does not believe her story. Her husband, however, sets up magical signs of
her fidelity that same night, and when he returns, they show that she was
faithful, and he fetches her home (Tewari 1991, 114–115). The critical difference
is that where the Sakath story has the husband test his wife, Añjanā’s proof is in
her virtue and her husband’s belief in it; the ring he gives Añjanā is intended to
be evidence for his family, rather than a test of Añjanā’s fidelity.
Accusations of shamelessness (public adultery) follow Añjanā’s pregnancy,
the Sword Husband, the Ganeś Cauth story, and also the incident between the
_
monk and Subhadrā. In each case the wife is powerless to argue against the
accusations, because her husband has either joined forces with his mother in
making these accusations or is simply absent and unable to corroborate her
evidence. These accusations are a justification for rejecting the wife. If the wife
is clearly virtuous and her husband or in-laws reject her, her in-laws are seen to
be at fault. However, if her in-laws can justifiably accuse their daughter-in-law
of shamelessness, the rejection is seen as correct and virtuous behavior. In
Añjanā’s story, the correctness of her rejection is doubly marked by her own
father’s rejection of her. These stories focus on the miraculous fertility of the
wife as the site of her suffering. In a sense, these stories are the crystallization
of a woman’s worst fears of rejection: that the best piece of evidence of her
integration with her marital family that she could provide—a son—would be
her undoing. In the Añjanā narrative, both the miraculous fertility and the
happy resolution of that worst case scenario are set in motion by Añjanā’s
virtuous religiosity, while her suffering comes at the hand of her parents-in-law
because of her husband’s absence.
The Accusing Mother-in-Law

Mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflict is a central theme in Hindu vrat kathā
literature (Narayan 1997; McGee 1987; Menzies 2004; Tewari 1991). In some
cases, the daughter-in-law is suspected by her mother-in-law of acting inten-
tionally to harm her marital family. Gold (1995a, 123–128) tells the story of the
Janglı̄ Rānı̄, who is rejected by her mother-in-law after she claims that the
Janglı̄ Rānı̄ is performing black magic. In the well-known story of Santosı̄ Mā,
˙
which is connected to a popular Hindu fast, the wife succeeds in consolidating
her husband’s affections by proving to her husband that his mother treats him
badly, which prepares him to take his wife’s side when she is abused by his
family (Menzies 2004, 421).35 Although most of these stories focus on the
wronged wife, there are others that present the mother-in-law as the victim of
abuse by her daughters-in-law whenever her sons are away (Menzies 2004,
414; Tewari 1991, 47–48). Story after story focuses on the conflicts inherent to
this relationship as the central problematic and an assumed state of being that
begins the narrative action.
The trope of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflict has some of its roots
in the sociopolitics of joint families and arranged marriages. Real-life conflicts
between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law usually arise out of workload
and resource distribution (Minturn 1993, 141–144), and it is in a woman’s best
interests to work well with her mother-in-law (Fruzetti 1982, 101–102). The
workload of a joint family is heavy, and the division of labor and resources is
fraught with potential conflict. Though many mother-in-law/daughter-in-law
pairs have close relationships, the structures of power within a joint family put
stress on this relationship, as these two women also compete for resources and
the attentions of their primary advocate in the family: the son/husband.36 The
fear that one’s husband might side with his parents or brothers lurks whenever
there are conflicts between a woman and her in-laws. Therefore it is in a wife’s
best interests to bind her husband’s affections to her while simultaneously
pleasing her mother-in-law.
In my experience, when some Jain women wanted to praise their relation-
ships with their marital home, they often did so by praising their mothers-in-law.
These descriptions can be divided into those which stress the mother-in-law’s
affection for her son’s wife: “she treats me as a daughter” and “she’s a second
mother”; and those which indicate that the mother-in-law is encouraging a close
relationship between her son and his wife: “she tells my husband to take me out”
and “she makes me go to events and she stays home to do the work.” Describing
marital happiness through the mother-in-law is both a reflection of the politics of
joint family life and a response to the assumptions based on the discourse of
Indian families, which posits that all mothers-in-law are unkind to new daugh-
ters-in-law. It is also a socially acceptable way to describe the growing closeness
to one’s husband without discussing any of the developing intimacy between
husband and wife in public. More intimate discussions occur between new
brides and their mothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, and girlfriends, but usually in
one-on-one or in small group settings. New brides often vehemently defend their
new mother-in-law, even if that defense weakens when the “honeymoon” period
is over and the mother-in-law begins to expect the daughter-in-law to participate
in household labor. Even later complaints were often targeted at the wives of the
husband’s brothers ( jethānı̄/devrānı̄) rather than at mothers-in-law, possibly to
avert any suggestion that the wife is at fault by not being properly obedient to her
mother-in-law. Daughters wish to integrate their marital lives with their natal
homes and strive for links between the two; a daughter’s happiness in her
marital home opens possibilities for further social (and economic) connections
between the two families, while strife demands a response from her natal family,
which may sour future relations, making it harder for the woman to move freely
between her two homes.37
Jain satı̄ narratives participate fully in reproducing the South Asian folk-
tale trope of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflict. However complex the
mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship may be in lived experience, many
Jain narratives indicate marital unhappiness through the unproblematized
sign of the cruel and distrusting mother-in-law and marital happiness through
the conversion of the mother-in-law to the daughter-in-law’s position or the
mother-in-law’s admission of the errors of her past ways. Subhadrā’s story
centers around her problems with her mother-in-law, and Añjanā’s story,
which appears to be mostly about marital relations, has her mother-in-law act
as the prime instigator of her banishment. Subhadrā and Añjanā are both
finally fully integrated into their marital homes when their mothers-in-law
recognize their errors and ask for forgiveness.
Strategic Piety in Jainism
Strategic piety can be an effective tool for women to use to assert their moral
virtue and, sometimes, moral superiority. This is not to argue that all piety is
strategic, or that strategic piety is a cynical act by an irreligious woman, but
rather than there are strategic uses of piety by women who are already identi-
fied as religious. Similarly, strategic piety may be deployed by women in ways
that assist them sociopolitically, not that they are necessarily deployed in the
name of that self-interest or in self-interest alone (after de Certeau 2002).
Strategic piety can span acts as disparate as a woman taking ordination to
effect a permanent break from her husband’s family to a woman’s increased
religious practice to create a more pious self. When the expectation of wifely
obedience comes into conflict with religion, Jain narratives clearly tell the wife
to stick to her religion and bring her husband around. Mahmood (2005,
177–180) describes how one Muslim wife used devout prayer and blessings
to keep her husband from prohibiting her participation in the women’s

mosque movement, drawing attention to the limits of seeing piety as a form
of either compliance or resistance to male control. Orsi (1996, 204–207) found
that immigrant Catholic women used prayer and public worship of St. Jude (of
“Hopeless Causes”) to remedy personal crises, but that at the same time this
piety served to indicate the level of a woman’s despair, her attempts to control
the situation, and her intention to publicly acknowledge the “hopelessness” of
her experience in a community where silence on marital problems was ex-
pected. Jain women, likewise, engage in kinds of Jain piety that grant them a
particular kind of social power, but the power of their piety resides in its
support of their ability to perform the acts of good wives. However, a good
reputation also grants the woman a more generalized social power in the
sphere of community opinion. One’s social position in the Jain community is
predicated on a complex interconnected relationship between status and vir-
tue; a virtuous wife is an asset in Jain communities, but the rejection or abuse
of a virtuous wife can damage a family’s reputation. Similarly, though women
need familial approval for taking vows to perform fasts that take them out of
the house for long periods of time, other practices were done by oneself. In my
observation, women were not criticized by their husbands for being religious,
even if that religiosity may diminish her attention to her other wifely duties,
because it is part of the duty of wives to be religious.
While both Subhadrā and Añjanā take ordination at the ends of their stories,
the discourse of renunciation is not important in the narratives as told, which
focus on marriage, virtue, and its challenges, nor is ordination suggested as the
remedy for the women’s problems. Ordination most often appears as a kind of
inevitable coda in which the woman takes ordination and achieves enlighten-
ment—a Jain liberation-directed ideological gloss on the ideal life and a kind of
“happily ever after.” However, these ordinations can also be read as a reminder to
women that ordination is a virtuous possibility and, perhaps, a method of opting
out of bad situations. Satı̄ narratives rarely suggest that a satı̄ acts to escape her
marriage or husband or even, for that matter, to benefit herself; often the merit
of acts is channeled toward the husband or the greater good of Jainism. And yet
there are significant exceptions in the Jain telling of the Rāmāyana; Sı̄tā re-
_
nounces without making any attempt to convince Rām to renounce (Sulasā
Candanabālā 1987, 61–62), making a choice that has the full sanction of a Jain
mendicant ( Jain Ramāyan 1989, 1045–1066).38
_
In 1994, there was an ordination in the suburbs of Pune of a middle-aged
married woman whose husband was alive. At the time, laywomen discussed
the ordination with great interest. Initially women spoke of how fortunate the
woman was that her husband was allowing her to pursue her ambition of being
a nun. A few women mentioned that the woman was unable to bear children
and therefore had no other obligations within the household. Later that month,
women said that she was escaping a bad marriage. Reynell, too, reports of three
women from her sample who used nunhood to escape marriage (Reynell
1985a, 269–271). The first took ordination after twenty years of a childless
and unhappy marriage. The second took ordination after a mere three years of
marriage, admitting that she had been unable to have children and her in-laws
had mistreated her. In the third example, the woman took ordination in her
mid-thirties, leaving behind young children, and although her family was very
religious, she showed a “marked lack of dedication” to being a nun (Reynell
1985a, 271). Her lack of interest and the presence of children suggest she was
escaping marriage. In Shāntā’s account of the life stories of nuns, two out of
seven indicated that they took ordination after being married (Shāntā 1997,
_
571–629). The Sthānānga Sūtra (355/157) lists acceptable reasons why one
might take Jain renunciation, including “in order to achieve a separation or
divorce (vihagagaipavvajjā, H. viyoga),” though this ranked lower than reasons
that focus on spirituality.39 Fohr writes that it is relatively rare for a married
woman to leave her husband and take ordination, especially if she has children.
She reports that when this happens there is speculation about whether this is
being done to escape a bad marriage, and that these nuns are less respected
(Fohr 2001, 161). Thus for a woman who wishes to escape a marriage, renun-
ciation is a viable but not especially attractive option, unless that woman is
already very religious.40 But we must be careful about attributing too many
women’s ordinations to a sort of de facto divorce. More likely, those women
who are very religious and who find their marriages unsatisfactory find in
ordination an answer to a seemingly insolvable problem.
In most cases, however, a woman chooses to remain married and use her
religious practices to improve her own reputation and the reputation of her
family, and thereby improve her situation. If a family has a good moral
reputation, then the assumption is that the women in the family are moral
and, if a woman in the family acts immorally, then the morality of the whole
family is called into question.41 Conversely, if the family is seen as less moral,
but one woman acts in especially moral ways, then the reputation of the family
may be improved. In other words, it is considerably easier for a woman to ruin
her family’s reputation than to improve it. Because of the downward tension in
the model, enormous concern is placed on the public acts and virtues of
women. Grand fasts work karmically to reduce karma, but because the larger
fasts also have public fast-breaking ceremonies, they publicly attest to a wo-
man’s virtue in a grand ceremony (Kelting 2006b, 197; Laidlaw 1995, 356–358;
Reynell 1991, 64) and may therefore improve the reputation of her husband’s
family, and she may, in turn, be rewarded by gaining more access to religious
activities and a release from some of her household duties. In Jain satı̄
narratives, the satı̄’s virtue is likewise tested publicly and she succeeds; this
then has the dual effect of proving her virtue and of illuminating the greatness
of Jainism. This trope is common, of course, in Hindu narratives as well, but
the public tests of the satı̄s are more closely mirrored by the public perfor-
mance and representation of contemporary Jain women’s fasting than the
more private and domestic fasts of Hindu women.
In both the Subhadrā and Añjanā stories, the satı̄ uses her religiosity to
prove her virtue against these accusations and is ultimately rewarded both by her
in-laws and by the general public, who praise her virtue and ask for forgiveness.
Jain laywomen likewise use religious behavior to prove their virtue publicly. Jain
consensus suggests a belief that public statements of religion indicate inner
virtue (Kelting 2009b; Laidlaw 1995, 146; Reynell 1991, 63–65). Jain women
negotiate public virtue in ways that hinge on this belief, using religious acts as a
kind of strategic piety. One young unmarried Jain woman whose behavior had
brought a whiff of scandal proceeded to spend the next year or so performing
public fasts and rituals, and soon she was spoken of as one of the most virtuous
young woman in her neighborhood and the scandal was forgotten, not even
arising during that young woman’s marriage arrangements. At the same time as
the young woman was performing all of her public rituals, privately she was
given many satı̄ narratives to read in what seemed like a bald attempt to create in
the young woman an obedience to the expectations of Jain women. In another
case, the marriage arrangements of a young woman were taking so long that
people were beginning to speculate whether there might be some scandal
involved. When these rumors reached her family, she was encouraged to per-
form public religious acts in order to quell any comments about her virtue, and
she was eventually married to a good family. These strategies both worked
because of the powerful link for Jains between public ritual and private virtue.
In both cases the families were considered quite respectable. Of course, that
notion of respectability was drawn in part from these families’ public participa-
tion in Jain ritual life. Reynell likewise found that two older unmarried women
were encouraged to attend public rituals in order to protect their reputations
(Reynell 1991, 63). Though most Jains are aware that religion might be used in
these kinds of strategic ways, there is also a sense—though it would not be put
this boldly—that the truly wayward would not be able or willing to perform these
religious acts. This is especially true for fasting, which is seen as too difficult for
many and impossible for those who are not virtuous.
After marriage, piety continues to be used strategically in order to gain
power through the public sense of a woman as virtuous. One new bride I knew
whose status in her marital family was weak and who was targeted for private
and some public verbal abuse, decided—on the advice of her aunt—to “become
religious” (dharmik ban jao) in order to publicly garner support for her claims
of unjust treatment.42 All of these women described above performed Jain
worship on occasion or regularly, but crises in their status vis-à-vis marriage led
them to use religious practices strategically to protect themselves in the eyes of
the public and their marital families, while they also hoped that the increase in
religious practice would—through accrual of merit—also actually remedy the
problems themselves.43 Contemporary Jain women creatively integrate the
sociopolitics of strategic piety with their beliefs in the efficacy of their rituals.
Satı̄ narratives tell us of deceit in marriage arrangements, poorly arranged
marriages to inappropriate families, religious differences, rejection by the
husband, childlessness, accusations of shamelessness, and conflicts with in-
laws. In each story, the satı̄ uses piety strategically and is ultimately victorious
and rewarded for her virtue. The rewards usually center around a resolution of
the marital problems with which the satı̄ is faced. Jain satı̄s are able to parlay
their virtue into marital happiness and at the same time work toward the
benefit of their husband’s lineage—often by converting the family to Jainism
or teaching them new rituals that lead to worldly and spiritual benefits for
them—and working toward their own spiritual benefit. What remains unex-
plored are the mechanisms by which satı̄ narratives and their associated rituals
are used creatively in the complex context of real life marriages. How do these
narratives enter the ritual lives of women? Why do rituals related to satı̄
narratives work so powerfully? How is it that they are so instrumental not
merely in accruing merit generally but also in preventing or solving the
particular problems of married life? How might the stories act as models for
both rituals and identity? It is to the ways that satı̄ narratives are linked to
particular rituals and why those rituals work powerfully for Jain wives that we
will now turn.
4
The Perfect Marriage
Maynāsundarı̄, the wife of King Śrı̄pāl, is the paradigmatic wife of

_
the Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjāk Jain satı̄ tradition.1 She is the women
with whom laywomen I interviewed most often ritually identified;
Maynāsundarı̄ was what most of them wish to be: a happily
_
married, religious, virtuous wife. Laywomen encounter Śrı̄pāl and
Maynāsundarı̄ in ubiquitous narratives (medieval epic poetry,
_
puranic-style retellings, medieval and modern hymns, contemporary
novel forms, oral retellings, dramatic reenactments, audio cassettes,
video dramas) and in rituals associated with the siddhacakra and the
Āyambil Olı̄ fast.2 The narratives codify a paradigmatic model for
_
virtuous wifely behavior, and the rituals extend the promise of
making the paradigm actual through ritual identification: in the
Āyambil Olı̄ fast women embody Maynāsundarı̄ enacting her fast,
_ _
and in the Siddhacakra pūjā, couples “become” Maynāsundarı̄ and
_
Śrı̄pāl, the paradigmatic sponsors of siddhacakra worship. In both,
lay Jains accrue merit, but women especially invoke the power of
religiomagic practices to create a happy marriage and to display
that marriage’s virtue publicly.
Women consistently identified the ideal (ādarś ) marriage with
companionate marriage based in mutual respect and unity like that
of Maynāsundarı̄ and Śrı̄pāl. In order for companionate marriage to be
_
the ideal, the wife must come to the marriage with expertise, wisdom,
and virtue; in essence, the perfect wife for the ideal marriage is the
dharmapatnı̄ (religious or dutiful wife). Maynā’s religious knowledge and virtue

_
render her a dharmapatnı̄, proving her worthiness to be a contributor in a
marriage based on mutuality. Śrı̄pāl himself follows Maynā’s lead in worship-
_
ing the siddhacakra and achieves greatness. The two together exemplify a
mutuality, which achieves well-being for their family and the status of a
publicly religious couple. This goes beyond being a dedicated wife (pativratā),
which is certainly good enough for a wife in a regular marriage. In the ideal
marriage, the wife has an active role as the teacher of religion and model of
virtue to be imitated rather than merely lauded. An ideal husband listens and
learns and then imitates her good acts, and in doing so benefits himself and his
family. Thus the ideal couple works together, especially in the area of religion.
It is one in which the strength of their companionate affection has the full
approval of her mother-in-law, precisely because it is firmly rooted in religious
virtue.
In the ritual culture of contemporary Jainism, women strive to reproduce
this ideal marriage both by taking vows and performing worship that promise
this result and by trying to serve as a dharmapatnı̄, encouraging their husbands
to perform rituals—especially those associated with these vows—alongside
them. When a couple performs the large-scale ceremonies associated with
the siddhacakra, they position themselves as the ideal Jain couple. The links
between the story, fasting, and worship rituals give Jains a way to invoke,
create, and reenact that ideal.
The Story of Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄

_
The story of Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ is widely known from the Śrı̄pāl
_
Rājā no Rās, the version written by Vinayavijay and Yaśovijay in 1682,
which was in most families’ book collection.3 The required study of this
epic poem—as far as I know, always the Vinayvijay and Yaśovijay ver-
sion—as part of the Āyambil Olı̄ and links between the Āyambil Olı̄ and
_ _
the Siddhacakra pūjās accounts for much of the popularity of the story.
Though less commonly performed, the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā is the pūjā
sine qua non associated with the Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄’s ritual cluster
_
and its efficacy. The story itself is a moral adventure tale considered both
efficacious and entertaining. I will give the narrative as told to me by one
senior Jain laywoman on two days (24 October and 28 October 2001)
during the 2001 fall season Āyambil Olı̄. This telling was based on that
_
woman’s earlier study of the Śrı̄pāl Rājā no Rās when she herself per-
formed the Navpad Olı̄ fast.
_
THE PERFECT MARRIAGE 81
MAYNA¯ SUNDARI¯ ’S STORY

_
Long ago in Ujjain, there were two sisters, Maynāsundarı̄ and

_
Sursundarı̄. They were the daughters of the two wives of King Prajāpāl
_
of Ujjain. Maynāsundarı̄ was raised as a Jain, and Sursundarı̄ was
_
raised as a Hindu. When it was time for them to get married, King
Prajāpāl arranged a self-choice marriage for his daughters.4
_
Sursundarı̄ chose a husband according to her taste and her father’s
wishes, but Maynāsundarı̄ refused. She gave her father a lecture on
_
how she would be married to the husband that fate and karma
determined. Her father got angry and decided to prove that he—not
fate and karma—would determine her destiny.
Earlier, Queen Kamalprabhā and her son Śrı̄pāl were driven from
_
their palace in Campa city by a coup that killed the king, Ajitsen.
Queen Kamalprabhā and prince Śrı̄pāl found refuge hiding among a
_
community of seven hundred lepers. Śrı̄pāl himself contracted
leprosy, and the lepers then named him king of the lepers. Śrı̄pāl’s
mother, as a Jain laywoman, had consulted with a Jain monk who
assured her that her son would have a religious wife (dharma patnı̄)
and that his leprosy would go away.
Soon after Maynāsundarı̄’s refusal to choose a groom, Śrı̄pāl and
_
the seven hundred lepers arrived at Ujjain. The king invited Śrı̄pāl,
king of the lepers, to the palace and offered him Maynāsundarı̄ in
_
marriage. Śrı̄pāl said: “You should not marry such a beautiful girl to
someone like me.” But the king said: “No, she said her karma will
determine her fate, so she will marry you.” Thus Śrı̄pāl and
Maynāsundarı̄ were married. Maynāsundarı̄’s mother was so upset
_ _
that she left her husband and returned to her brother’s house. In her
last conversation with Maynāsundarı̄, she told her to never give up her
_
religion. Maynāsundarı̄ insisted on joining Śrı̄pāl in the jungle with
_
the lepers, rather than staying at home in a safe palace. People began
to disrespect Jainism; after all, it led Maynāsundarı̄ to disrespect her
_
father and to be married to a leper.
After their wedding, Maynāsundarı̄ insisted that they perform
_
worship to an image of Ādināth, the first Jina, and get the blessing of a
Jain monk. When she did worship (pūjā), a flower fell from the image
into the folds of her sari.5 After their worship they went to seek the
blessing of Municandrajı̄.6 Maynāsundarı̄ told the monk: “People are
_
saying bad things about Jainism because of my marriage [to a leper].”
Maynāsundarı̄ asked the monk what she could do to help people

_
understand the truth about Jainism, and asked for a mantra.
The monk told Maynāsundarı̄ to recite the Navkār mantra and to
_
perform the “nine times nine” āyambil fasts: for nine days, twice a
year, for four and a half years. “At the end of this fast,” he said, “you
will see that your husband is a prince.” Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄
_
together performed this series of fasts—thereafter called the Navpad
Olı̄ fast. Śrı̄pāl was cured of leprosy, and he was revealed to be not
_
merely the king of the lepers but the prince Śrı̄pāl, son of Ajitsen. The
water left over from their worship was then used to cure all the other
seven hundred lepers.
After everyone was healed, Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ returned to
_
his mother and touched her feet. Śrı̄pāl’s mother was thrilled to see
her son healthy again and to meet her lovely and auspicious daughter-
in-law. Then Maynāsundarı̄’s mother arrived and, not recognizing her
_
now-healthy son-in-law, wept, ashamed that Maynāsundarı̄ had
_
shamelessly taken a new husband. After Maynāsundarı̄’s mother
_
realized it really was Śrı̄pāl, Śrı̄pāl’s mother told Maynāsundarı̄’s
_
mother the story of how Śrı̄pāl had come to be a leper. Maynāsundarı̄’s
_
mother insisted that they teach Maynā’s father that he had been wrong
_
to fault Jainism by showing him what great husband Śrı̄pāl turned out
to be! Maynāsundarı̄ then went to live in her uncle’s house (māmānu
_
ghar) with her mother-in-law, who loved her like a daughter, and Śrı̄pāl
sailed to another country to make his fortune.
While Śrı̄pāl was traveling, he was kidnapped by a merchant who
needed to offer a human sacrifice in order to propitiate the goddess
who was preventing his ship from sailing out to the ocean. Śrı̄pāl
convinced the merchant to let him try reciting the Navkār mantra
instead, and it worked. The merchant let Śrı̄pāl go and rewarded him
with half of his fleet. Śrı̄pāl built a temple to celebrate his release and
good fortune.
With the aid of the Navkār mantra and his worship of the
siddhacakra, Śrı̄pāl was able to achieve great wealth, and both he and
Maynāsundarı̄ had good health and happiness. They remained
_
devoted to Jainism, and after eight happy lives as a married couple,
Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ reached liberation.
_
With the exception of a monk’s sermons during the Āyambil Olı̄ festival, this
_
version of the story included many more details than most of the oral tellings
I collected. (The narrator herself had performed the Navpad Olı̄ pūjā and was
_
particularly attached to the story of Maynā and Śrı̄pāl.) Likewise, most other
_
oral tellings did not include any episodes from Śrı̄pāl’s life after he was healed.
The laywoman’s focus on that particular episode from Śrı̄pāl’s later adventures
was surely connected to the widespread belief that the temple Śrı̄pāl built after
the episode of the wind goddess was in Thane, near Bombay. It is thought that
a temple in Thane, whose interior walls are covered with bas-relief panels
narrating Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄’s story, is in fact that same temple. It is
_
very likely that my interest in the temple prompted this teller to insert that
episode as a coda.
In October 2001, during the Āyambil Olı̄ (24 October–1 November), when
_
the elderly laywoman told me her version above, the resident Jain monk
Devguptavijayjı̄ also told the story of Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄. Devguptavijay-
_
jı̄’s version was very similar, but in his version Maynāsundarı̄—not a monk—
_
convinces Śrı̄pāl to perform the Āyambil Olı̄ with her; he also continued the
_
story with several episodes from Śrı̄pāl’s wanderings in his sermons on the
latter four days of the festival. Each episode focused on how the Navkār
mantra and the siddhacakra miraculously saved Śrı̄pāl. Laidlaw recounts the
story as told by a Khartar Gaccha nun during the Āyambil Olı̄, which follows
_
the same more abbreviated form as the version given above, but without any
episodes of Śrı̄pāl’s adventures (Laidlaw 1995, 226). The version given in a
monk’s sermon and reported by Cort (2001b, 162–163) also ends with
the miraculous healing of Śrı̄pāl and the seven hundred lepers. Despite the
extended focus in the Śrı̄pāl Rājā no Rās on Śrı̄pāl’s adventures after his
marriage and the use of these later stories by monks to fill out the nine days
of sermons during the Āyambil Olı̄ festival, virtually all other tellings of
_
this very popular story ended with the miraculous disappearance of Śrı̄pāl’s
leprosy.7 The story, then, centers around Maynā’s piety, her teaching Śrı̄pāl
_
about religion, and her performance of the worship that leads to his being
healed. In most tellings, it is clear that Maynā’s virtue and knowledge—not
_
Śrı̄pāl’s—are at the center of the story.
One Jain couple I know bought a VCD, Maināsundarı̄: Jain Kathā (2004),
while on pilgrimage in 2004 to a Jain temple near Ujjain, the city of Maynā’s
_
birth. The VCD was quite popular and was passed from house to house before
it was given to me. Parallel with most versions, the video begins with the king
offering his daughters the choice of their husbands and ends with the curing of
Śrı̄pāl and the lepers of leprosy. The video emphasizes two narrative moments
with intensified pathos: one, when Maynā’s father marries her to Śrı̄pāl, and
_
two, when Śrı̄pāl later tells Maynā to leave him before she catches leprosy.
_
In both cases, Maynā gives a short speech on wifehood, stressing the impor-
_
tance of staying with Śrı̄pāl in happiness and in sorrow and how it is her duty
to serve him. In the second scene, when Śrı̄pāl insists that she leave him,
Maynā explains that she has nowhere else to go because, she says, “a wife has
_
no home but that of her husband”—a trope made realistic by the manner in
which her father casts her out of her childhood home. After Śrı̄pāl agrees that
she can stay, she tells him that they must go on pilgrimage to worship the
siddhacakra yantra. As in most oral tellings, it is Maynā, without any instruc-
_
tion from a monk, who determines the correct ritual. After she worships the
siddhacakra (alone) she brings the blessed bathing water (praksāl) down from
˙
the mountain and sprinkles it all over Śrı̄pāl and the lepers, healing them
instantly. It is clear that in the video, Maynā does this worship knowing full
_
well that the praksāl will heal her husband and the lepers. Śrı̄pāl gives a short
˙
speech praising Maynā as a wife, which ends with his saying that he “comes to
_
her door to worship her,” suggesting that it is Maynā whose virtue is exemplary
_
and worthy of veneration. Although Maynā spends a good deal of time telling
_
Śrı̄pāl that as his wife she should worship him, throughout the video she is
represented as brave, knowledgeable, virtuous, and authoritative—in essence,
a dharmapatnı̄—a person worthy of veneration.
Although Vinayvijay and Yaśovijay’s Śrı̄pāl Rājā no Rās is the authoritative
version among these Jains, oral and other written versions of the story share a
form that differs from their version in a few significant ways. Most important
to our discussion, most versions of the Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ story center
_
around Maynāsundarı̄ as the heroine. It is her knowledge of Jainism and the
_
proper rituals which lead to Śrı̄pāl’s cure and their happiness and prosperity.
Even when tellings included Maynāsundarı̄ learning the worship from the
_
monk, the tellers are clear that it is Maynāsundarı̄’s correct knowledge and
_
ritual practice that leads them to that monk. Because these tellings of the story
center on Maynāsundarı̄, most versions begin with her argument with her
_
father and end when she heals the lepers; the many adventures of Śrı̄pāl are
not included, and the climax of the story is the miraculous healing as a result of
Maynā’s piety and fasting. With Maynāsundarı̄ foregrounded, one can read this
_ _
story as the story of the perfect wife.
Maynāsundarı̄ as the Ideal Wife

_
This story provides us with several key episodes that serve as normative models
of wifely virtue. To begin with, Maynā is understood to manifest all the virtues
_
of a devoted wife (pativratā). In line with mainstream western Indian values of
pativratā discussed in chapter 1, the Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ story tells us that
_
a good wife is faithful to her husband regardless of his flaws (leprosy), that she
performs any and all rites that may protect or assist her husband in his
ambitions, and that she performs this job (preferably with the help of her
mother-in-law), despite his long absences and—though this detail was never
included in any oral tellings or sermons—his subsequent marriages to
Maynā’s co-wives in the Śrı̄pāl Rājā no Rās.8 We have seen in chapter 2 that
_
one important way in which women protect their husbands is to make sure
that they perform the correct rituals, which in a Jain context, leads to merit
from the ritual accruing to the husband. Maynāsundarı̄ is the paragon of
_
this strategy within Śvetāmbar Jain ritual and narrative traditions. Her
husband performs, because of her influence, worship of the siddhacakra and
is rewarded enormously. His mother is likewise blessed by the ritual knowl-
edge, and also by the care she receives from Maynāsundarı̄ as a widowed
_
mother-in-law whose son is abroad. Maynāsundarı̄ extends the protection
_
of her natal family (through her uncle—māmā) to her mother-in-law
while also tending to her every need. She is the perfectly devoted wife and
daughter-in-law.
The stories depict Maynāsundarı̄ as considerably more than devoted: they
_
offer her as an ideal, the dharmapatnı̄. Maynāsundarı̄’s virtue begins in her
_
childhood. Before she is married, she is devoutly Jain. Her fidelity to her
religious beliefs and the philosophical views she has studied put her in direct
conflict with her father. Vimalvijay’s sixteenth-century Maynāsundarı̄nı̄ Sajjhāy
_
(also called the Navpadnı̄ Sajjhāy) is performed as part of the nightly confession
during the Āyambil Olı̄ festival.9 The story of Maynāsundarı̄ and her sister,
_ _
Sursundarı̄, is told in a way that juxtaposes Maynā’s knowledge of Jain philoso-
_
phy (and therefore correct knowledge) with the incorrect knowledge of both
her sister and her father, setting up the foundation for portraying her as a
dharmapatnı̄ later in the narrative.
O Mother Sarasvatı̄, give me the pleasures of speech.

So I may sing of Maynāsundarı̄satı̄, bring the correct sentiment to
_
my heart.
Keep the Navkār in your heart, and your heart will be filled with joy.
Maynāsundarı̄ and Śrı̄pāl received the bounty of their fruitful
_
religion.
In Malav, in the city of Ujjain, there ruled a king, Prthvı̄pāl, lord of
_
the people.
The king had two delights, his matchless wives,
These wombs gave birth to the pair: Sursundarı̄ and Maynā.
_
Sursundarı̄ went to the pandit, learned his science and was turned
toward falsehood,
Maynāsundarı̄ learned the meaning of Jain philosophy and adopted

_
the correct views.10
The king said: “Dear daughters, I am bent with age, ask me for your
heart’s desire and I will give it to you.”
Sursundarı̄ asked for a husband and to be married at an auspicious
time and place;
Maynāsundarı̄ pronounced: “As my karma wills it, so it will be.”
_
[Her father replied] “Your karma has come to fruition, you will
marry this kind of husband, daughter;
Hold fast to your philosophy and marry this leper.”
She undertook the Āyambil fast and removed all forms of leprosy,
She, who had the best knowledge, was the true teacher of King
Śrı̄pāl.
Jain Sajjhāymālā 1986, 333
Maynāsundarı̄’s conflict with her father in the tellings of the story fits neatly
_
into a genre of South Asian tales about daughters who preach to their fathers.11
More significant to our discussion is the manner in which Maynā’s disobedi-
_
ence shows the reader that she is well versed in Jain philosophy and that her
position is correct.
It ends with an idealized statement about the religious wife (dharmapatnı̄)
who, having correct knowledge, is best suited to teach her husband;
Maynāsundarı̄ is the “true teacher of King Śrı̄pāl.” It is through her instruction,
_
the sajjhāy insists, that Śrı̄pāl becomes the model layman. In Navpadnā
Upāsako, a question-and-answer-style manual for understanding the Navpadjı̄
and the story of Maynā and Śrı̄pāl, the author writes that Śrı̄pāl knew nothing
_
of the true knowledge (tattva-jñān) and had not even reached the stage of right
views (samyak-darśan—the marker of basic Jain identity) before he married
Maynā (Navpadnā Upāsako 1998, 39–40). Śrı̄pāl, it continues, learned all this
_
by listening to his wife. Maynā is a dharmapatnı̄—the moral and religious
_
instructor for her husband—and Śrı̄pāl wisely accepts her authority. After their
marriage Śrı̄pāl follows Maynāsundarı̄’s guidance in matters of religious prac-
_
tice, much to his great benefit. Throughout the story Maynāsundarı̄’s piety is
_
not challenged by Śrı̄pāl. The fact that Śrı̄pāl accepts her advice readily circum-
vents the kinds of challenges for a good Jain and a good wife that we saw in
chapter 3 in the narrative of Subhadrā and others who choose fidelity to religion
over obedience to their husbands when they experience a conflict between the
values of the marital homes and their own religious beliefs.
In this sense, the ideal Jain layman is a student of his wife in religious
matters. Within Hindu discourse, we find many stories in which wives teach
their husbands the error of their ways, but in most of these stories the husband
must be convinced by misfortune or cunning of the value of his wife’s religious
knowledge. Gold (Gold 2000, 222–223) tells one story of Mother Ten (Dasa
Mātā) who is identified with Laksmı̄ and whose worship falls in the spring
˙
festival cluster following Holı̄. In this story, a king destroys the Dasa Mātā
string (a knotted white string worn by those who complete the Dasa Mātā fast)
which his wife wears instead of her gold and silver jewelry, and he shows no
respect for his wife’s concerns about insulting Dasa Mātā. Great misfortune
befalls the king; finally, he accepts his wife’s lecture on the importance of
the Dasa Mātā string and submits to his wife’s order to get supplies for the
worship. Elsewhere Gold (1995b, 437) writes that the Mother Ten stories posit
that success arises out of both grace of the goddess and cunning of the wife.
Harlan (1992, 158–163) writes about contexts in which the Rajput women
with whom she did her research understood there to be a conflict between
obedience to husband and the duty to protect the husband and his lineage.
Rajput women’s stories often tell of women who shame their husbands into
doing their duty as warriors. This disobedience is only acceptable because it
both supports the husband’s duty and is contextualized within that same
pativratā’s devotion to her husband, which proves her good intention (Harlan
1992, 168). Hindu satı̄mātā stories include restrictions that must be obeyed by
the husband’s lineage, many of which are “tailored to ensure that men will
learn their responsibilities as men” (Harlan 1992, 158). In all of these stories,
the women do know their duty and they are capable of asserting a kind of
limited authority over their husbands. Gold (2000, 223) adds: “husbands who
deny or suspect their wives’ religious knowledge and practices are fools who
will eventually learn the hard way to know and act better.” Many of the narrative
trajectories follow the same path: a husband fails to recognize his wife’s ritual
knowledge, calamity ensues, the husband comes to his senses, the wife in-
structs her husband, disaster is narrowly averted.
Hindu women’s domestic manuals, all written by men, instruct women
to be obedient even if her husband is asking her to perform an act that
would otherwise be unlawful or socially unacceptable (Leslie 1989, 324). Leslie
discusses the loci of authority in Tryambakayajvan’s late-seventeenth- to ear-
ly-eighteenth-century women’s manual, Strı̄dharmapaddhati: for men, authori-
ty lies with their fathers, their mothers, and their teachers; and for women,
the authority resides with their fathers-in-law, their mothers-in-law, and
their husbands (Leslie 1989, 157, 322–323). The text makes it clear, however,
that parents and parents-in-law come before teachers and husbands. In her
study of nineteenth-century domestic manuals written for the middle-class
Bengali elite, Walsh (2004) found that although the manuals encourage
women to learn modernity through the global discourse of domesticity, they

argue that domesticity should be learned from one’s husband. Prior to these
manuals—and outside middle-class urban elites—women were expected to
learn the rites and practices of wifehood from elder natal and then affinal
women.12 The seemingly reformist language that gives women recourse from
the power of mothers-in-law grants all knowledge and authority to a woman’s
husband instead (Walsh, 2004, 63–68, 105–111).13 In each case, however, the
wife is the one who learns and who submits unquestioningly to the authority of
her husband and/or his family.
Maynāsundarı̄’s story differs from Hindu fasting stories, nineteenth-cen-
_
tury domestic manuals, and from most Jain satı̄ narratives in one key way that
Jain women repeatedly pointed out to me: that is, that her husband Śrı̄pāl
believed her immediately, and by following her religious advice he achieved
health and prosperity. Not only does her husband follow along, but his mother
also sees the value of Maynāsundarı̄’s knowledge and likewise joins her. The
_
acceptance of Maynā’s religious authority by Śrı̄pāl makes their marriage
_
mutual and blessed; Jain laywomen described the ideal marriage to me, in
part, as one in which the husband defers to his wife’s religious expertise
and joins her in performing religious acts, granting her power in an important
sphere of domestic life. In my observations, when men wanted to diminish
their wives’ authority, they denigrated religious rituals; interestingly, they did
not discuss their wives’ inability to understand business, finance, or politics
(areas under male control) but set about eroding the value of the expertise
their wives do have.14 In this context, Śrı̄pāl’s unquestioning acceptance of
Maynā’s religious expertise and his continued commitment to Jain rituals
_
grant Maynā’s authority in the domestic sphere—in a kind of equality with
_
his financial acumen. Since much of Śrı̄pāl’s financial success derives from his
worship of the siddhacakra and recitation of the Navkār mantra—both of
which he learned from Maynā—one could attribute the worldly success of
_
the couple to her religiosity in general. This was a common belief among
contemporary Jains; women (and also men, though to a lesser degree) attrib-
uted good fortune to the meritorious acts of their family’s women.15 The Śrı̄pāl
and Maynāsundarı̄ story provides a counternarrative to wifely obedience and
_
silence; granted the story’s premise involves an ideal wife—a premise that
could give contemporary Jain husbands a loophole through which they could
escape deference to their wife’s religious expertise—the fact remains of the
possibility of one’s wife being a Maynā, a dharmapatnı̄, and that the path to
_
success lies in following her lead.
During the 2001 Fall Olı̄ festival, Devguptavijayjı̄, who was resident in
_
Shivajinagar for the rainy season, gave a series of nine sermons—one for each
day of the festival—which focused on the Āyambil Olı̄ fast and the story of
_
Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄. On 26 October 2001, the fourth day of the Olı̄
_ _
festival, Devguptavijayjı̄ expanded on this theme of the religious and perfect
wife. He dramatized a dialogue between Śrı̄pāl and a monk (using his vocal
inflection to distinguish between the two):
[ŚRĪPĀL SAID:] Dharmapatnı̄, dharmapatnı̄, dharmapatnı̄! Tell me brother,

tell me, what is a dharmapatnı̄? What’s a dharmapatnı̄?
[THE MONK SAID:] What did you say? A dharmapatnı̄ is the kind of wife you
have in your home (dharmapatnı̄ terı̄ gharmā patnı̄). Dharmapatnı̄.
Dharmapatnı̄. Dharmapatnı̄ is a dutiful/religious (dharma) wife
(patni). She follows her duty (dharma), but after that she does more.
In her religious duties, she does more than is required. That’s what
she is.
[ŚRĪPĀL SAID:] What does that mean?
[THE MONK SAID:] About religious knowledge, about devotion, she knows
everything, and more. Son, there is much to gain from learning all
that a dharmapatnı̄ knows.
In his sermon, Devguptavijayjı̄ proceeded to localize the narrative by naming

women in the room as dharmapatnı̄s; he named a few of the most pious and
devoted women in the congregation, and the crowd nodded. The husband of one
woman skeptically looked up at Devguptavijayjı̄, and the monk told him that he
should listen to his wife on matters of religion. The sermon continued focusing
on the benefits of having a dharmapatnı̄ and how, after the conversation with the
monk, Śrı̄pāl listened to Maynā, his dharmapatnı̄, and because he listened he was
_
healed and gained good fortune and prosperity. Later that fall, during an auction
related to Devguptavijayjı̄’s twentieth anniversary as a monk, he referred to a
women who was bidding heavily in the auctions as Maynāsundarı̄.16
_
In a brief essay on the nature of dharmapatnı̄s in a contemporary lay manual,
Tapā Gacch monk Ratnasenavijayjı̄ expounds on the proper wife for a Jain
layman. Addressing Jain laymen, he writes: “A religious woman will raise your
children correctly and encourages her husband to perform Jain rituals beside her.
If you have the misfortune to marry a woman who is not of your religion, have her
worship with you. But only a woman who is a pious Jain may be called a
dharmapatnı̄. In history dharmapatnı̄s have led lives of austerity and restraint
and nowadays you may still meet such a woman” (Cintanmotı̄ 2002, 48). To
marry any woman who is not already a religious Jain is to suffer misfortune that
can only be partly overcome through the non-Jain wife’s compliance. It is not
enough for a wife to perform the rituals properly; ideally she must be an instigator
and educator of Jain piety. Throughout Ratnasenavijayjı̄’s description, he is clear

that dharmapatnı̄s still exist, that a Jain layman should strive to marry such a
woman, and that having married her he should listen to her.
Āyambil Olı̄ Fasts: Making a Happy Marriage

_
Religiously minded contemporary Jain women often overtly emulated
Maynāsundarı̄ and positioned themselves as dharmapatnı̄s. These women
_
not only performed the Āyambil Olı̄ but also cajoled their husbands into
_
performing the Navpad pūjā and sometimes even fasting alongside them.
Three husbands I know independently referred to their wives as dharmapatnı̄s
who made the husband’s lineage more religious and orthoprax. Unsurprising-
ly, it was even more common for men to describe their mothers as dharma-
patnı̄s to their fathers. When a woman brings religious knowledge to a family,
it was always described as a virtue.17 In the context of wifehood and child
rearing, the dharmapatnı̄ becomes the moral compass of the home. Jain
laywomen’s efforts to emulate Maynā are clustered around their performance
_
of the Olı̄ fasts (Āyambil or Navpad) as a strategy to create a happy marriage
_
and siddhacakra worship (daily, Navpadjı̄ pūjā, or Siddhacakra mahāpūjā) as
the locus for maintaining and displaying that happiness.
In chapter 2 we saw that fasts—like the Rohinı̄ fast—are part of how women
_
protect their husbands and therefore their own well-being, and in chapter 3 we
saw that Jain piety is credited with creating marital happiness. The Navpad
Olı̄ fast is a key fast women named as fortifying their saubhāgya, but also
_
contributing to familial prosperity (the fast causes the return of Śrı̄pāl’s noble
identity and status) and marital happiness (Śrı̄pāl respects Maynā’s ritual knowl-
_
edge and she begins married life with a grateful mother-in-law).
Though the earliest narratives suggest that Maynā and Śrı̄pāl performed
_
the fast together, most of the contemporary published versions and all of
the oral tellings had Maynā performing the fast on Śrı̄pāl’s behalf. The
_
Maynāsundarı̄nı̄ Sajjhāy (given above) ends with the couplet:
_
She undertook the Āyambil fast and removed all forms of leprosy,
She, who had the best knowledge, was the true teacher of King
Śrı̄pāl.
Jain Sajjhāymālā 1986, 333
Likewise, in the daily liturgical texts associated with the Navpad Olı̄ fast found
_
in the fasting manual for that fast, we find a concluding verse that credits
18
Maynā’s worship with all of Śrı̄pāl’s success.
_
Maynā recited the Navkār and worshiped the Navpad, and Śrı̄pal
glowed.
His sickness gone, he obtained equanimity, and in his ninth birth
he will achieve liberation.
Navpad Olı̄nı̄ Vidhi 1995, 24
_
The shift toward Maynā performing the rituals on Śrı̄pāl’s behalf is, of course, a
_
source of authorization for women who wish to do the same for their hus-
bands. In most versions of the story, Maynā completes the fast and Śrı̄pāl is
_
healed. There is no exact description of how this healing is affected, but there is
a special note that the blessed bathing water is used to heal the seven hundred
lepers. In the Mainasundari VCD, Śrı̄pāl is completely uninvolved in Maynā’s
_
worship of the siddhacakra—he claims no knowledge of what she is doing and
does not even take darśan of it—and she is able, by sprinkling the blessed
bathing water on him, to heal him.19 The act of sprinkling the bathing water
allows Maynā to transfer the blessing. In my experience, women only dis-
_
cussed bringing bathing water home in the context of the Śānti Snātra pūjā,
where it is used to bless either a house or sick people. For the basic mainte-
nance of a happy marriage, laywomen relied on the efficacy of their fast and the
hopes that their husband might join them in the final Navpadjı̄ pūjā. In spite of
the problems about acting on behalf of others outlined in chapter 2, women felt
sure that their fasting and worship would benefit their husbands whether or
not they were involved, and often cited the story of Maynāsundarı̄ to justify
_
their claims. Other scholars have found that the story of Maynāsundarı̄ and
_
Śrı̄pāl was a key example of direct merit transfer in Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjāk
Jain texts and practices (Cort 2003, 141–142; Reynell 1985a, 127).
The Navpad Olı̄nı̄ Vidhi can be found in most homes and provides
_
the details of the fast.20 In its simplest sense, the Navpad Olı̄ involves
_
performing nine rounds of the Āyambil Olı̄ (which itself is nine consecutive
21 _
days of āyambil fasting). Each of the nine days of the Āyambil Olı̄ is linked to
_
one of the positions on the siddhacakra yantra.22 There are many ritual
injunctions associated with this fast, but most important are those restrictions
associated with an āyambil fast. The āyambil fast consists of a single sitting of
tasteless food.23 Much of the fast’s austerity (and therefore efficacy) derives
from the tasteless food: there was a strong consensus that single-sitting fasts in
which one eats ordinary (seasoned) food are considerably easier. The āyambil
fast is the fast of choice for longer fasts because the tasteless food brings the
fast closer in austerity to a full fast by removing any pleasure in the reduced
eating, while the intake of calories means that one can perform longer fasts
than are possible with no food.24 There are additional suggestions for those
who perform this fast who wish to increase the benefits of the fast through
heightened observance, including observing celibacy on fast days. The auste-
rities in this fast are a decrease in food but also a renunciation of the very
pleasures that mark a happy marriage. Like other major Jain fasts, the faster
is required to perform temple worship (in this case, centered around the
siddhacakra), morning and night confession, twice-daily examination of their
clothes for bugs and other small creatures, thrice-daily veneration of the
twenty-four Jinas, and the veneration of living mendicants. Unique to this
fast is the requirement of studying its originary story, the Śrı̄pāl Rājā no Rās.
The Śrı̄pāl Rājā no Rās serves as a fasting narrative (vrat kathā) for the
Navpad Olı̄; its study is required, and the narrative itself tells the faster the
_
reasons for, the method of, and the possible results from performing the fast.25
This epic narrative poem is, of course, not included in the pamphlet, but most
homes as well as the temple had copies of the poem. In order to complete the
reading by the end of the nine days, which is enjoined upon all fasters, many
fasters (and other women who wish to benefit from hearing the story) meet
in the afternoon to have the most proficient readers read the text for the group.
The time commitment of this requirement and the fact that one would read the
whole text nine times before completing the fast makes the link between the
story (and Maynāsundarı̄) and the present performance (and the faster) much
_
stronger in the minds of those who perform it than in other fasts.
Whereas the Navpad Olı̄ fast was performed virtually exclusively by
_
married women, the instructions address both men and women, indicating
both that men are not prohibited from performing this fast—as they are from
performing the Rohinı̄ fast—and that some men are even expected to perform
_
it. In my observations and also those of Cort (2001b, 162), Laidlaw (1995, 225),
and Reynell (1985a, 127; 1991, 57), it is unusual for men to perform the Navpad
Olı̄, which reflects both the understanding that long fasts are mostly a women’s
_
practice and also that the most commonly understood goals of this fast—
marital happiness and well-being—are goals under the province of wives.
However, occasionally older men will perform āyambil fasts, and women
performing the long fast were often able to convince their husbands to perform
a single day’s āyambil fast, though rarely any of the attendant practices. The
women who did not successfully cajole their husbands into participating—the
majority—assured me that their fast created a happy marriage regardless.
Women who successfully cajoled their husband into a single āyambil fast
and also into performing the Navpad pūjā—rather than simply sponsoring it
financially—stressed the problem of merit transfer and the need for the
husband to actually perform some of the ritual in order to benefit from his
wife’s austerities. This participation not only ensures that merit binds to the
husband but also positions the couple as an ideal couple who worship together
for the benefit of their marriage, as Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ did.
_
Desired Fruits, Promised Results

At a basic level, the rituals associated with Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ are
_
effective because of the power of the Navkār mantra and the siddhacakra
yantra—also called the Navpad or Navpadjı̄—in particular and because of the
accumulation of merit from performing Jain worship and austerities in gener-
al. While the Navpad Olı̄ fast also benefits the performer by decreasing karma,
_
the focus in the siddhacakra ritual complex is on merit making and auspicious-
ness. There are many tales of the powers of the Navkār mantra, but the power
of the siddhacakra yantra is illuminated primarily through the experiences
of Śrı̄pāl and Maynā. When Jains imitate the worship of Śrı̄pāl and Maynā, they
_ _
do so with the hopes that they will receive the same kinds of benefits. Thus the
efficacious results of this worship and the attendant fast are saubhāgya, marital
happiness, prosperity, and health—especially protection from skin diseases.
Siddhacakra pūjā and the Āyambil Olı̄ are linked over and over again to the
_
good fortunes of Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄. Whereas other pūjā texts claim
_
the efficacy of granting health and well-being, those results arising from
worshiping the siddhacakra were the ones most commonly named by contem-
porary Jains as effective.26
In its broadest application, the worship of the siddhacakra is said to be
powerful in a wide variety of contexts drawn from episodes in Śrı̄pāl Rājā no
Rās. In Navpadjı̄ Stavan, performed as part of the Navpad pūjā liturgy,
the powers of the siddhacakra and the results and efficacy of its veneration
are given in detail.
Keep the Navpad in your heart, and everything will be happy.

Remember the Navpad with every breath, all your sorrows will go
away.
Love the Navpad with all your heart and the eighteen afflictions will
vanish.
Coughs, tuberculosis, and the misery of sickness, none of these will
happen to you.
Acts of enemies, ocean, fire, dropsy, and fear of imprisonment will
vanish.
Thieves, cutthroats, witches, and hags, these will all go far away.
The childless will have sons, the poor will gain wealth;
Fully free from desire, after meditation, these men will go to

liberation.
Śrı̄matı̄ recited this glorious mantra and turned a snake into a
flower garland.
Amarkumār, by keeping the Navpad in his soul, obtained the
highest joy.
Maynā recited the Navkār and worshiped the Navpad, and Śrı̄pal
_
glowed.
His sickness gone, he obtained equanimity and in his ninth birth,
he will achieve liberation.
Enlightened teachers, liberated ones, mendicant leaders,
preceptors, mendicants, those of great qualities,
Correct views, knowledge, acts and austerities, these are the
qualities of the Navpad.
Unendingly keep the siddhacakra in the heart, and the speaker will
not return [be reborn].
Defeat sorrow and one’s wishes are fulfilled, bow with devotion.
Bhāvasāgar says: “Those who worship the Siddhacakra,
Their souls, having experienced its good qualities, will wear the
garland of auspiciousness.”
_
The Navpad is granted the power to destroy many terrible things and to solve
several problems of worldly life (childlessness, poverty, sickness). This list
also stands in for a totality of afflictions, which are destroyed through the
overarching power of the yantra.
In Ratnaśekharsūri’s (1371 CE) Siddhacakra mahāpūja liturgy, the opening
descriptions of the worship of the siddhacakra delineate the benefits of
the pūjā, the notable virtue of which is that they adapt themselves to one’s
position:27
If one correctly performs the Siddhacakra pūjā and [Navkār] mantra in

front of the [siddhacakra] yantra, one will obtain all the things they
desire. From propitiating the siddhacakra, one gains health and
wealth. One receives the fortunes of one’s position. Women obtain a
good women’s status, sons obtain good sons’ status. Auspicious wives
obtain the goal of auspicious wifehood. Respectable people obtain the
respect and honor they desire. Rulers obtain the great kingdoms
they desire. If one does the Siddhacakra fast, men gain a prosperous,
lovely, fortunate kingdom. By means of the power of the siddhacakra
yantra, dangerous poison, malaria, and bubonic plague are destroyed.

Corrupting leprosy and other like diseases, and tuberculosis are
quickly calmed down. (Siddhacakra Yantroddhār Brhat Pūjanvidhi
_
1993, 13–15)
In this text, the term “desire” (vāncitam; Gujarati gloss, vāncit) is utterly
conventional. “One receives the fortunes of one’s position” glosses this efficacy
most clearly; it is the conventional ideals of a subject position that this worship
rewards, not, as we commonly understand the term (after Freud) in English,
the psychological desires of an individual person. There is no room here
for unconventional desires: a son will not obtain the power to overthrow his
father, nor will a wife subvert her virtuous husband, and so on. In a sense, the
siddhacakra’s power serves to intensify the natural order and its existing
hierarchies. One cannot be, generically, an ideal person; one can only perform,
in an ideal way, the duties of one’s subject position. Seen in this light,
the yantra’s generalized healing is also in the service of removing obstacles to
self-realization within one’s subject position; Śrı̄pāl cannot inherit his kingdom
until his leprosy is cured and he is recognized. Thus his healing returns him to
the position in which he belongs, and his continued worship of the siddha-
cakra grants him the fortunes of his correct position. The worship of the
siddhacakra, then, works on two levels: one, to ensure that a worshiper is
returned to his or her correct subject position, and two, to shower the good
fortunes associated with that position on the worshiper. Though this posits a
wide array of possible rewards, the connection of the worship with the story
of Maynā and Śrı̄pāl leads the sponsors to perform this worship as couples
_
in order to create ideal marriages and to reap the rewards of that ideal
marriage. In 2008, one young woman’s family sponsored a Siddhacakra ma-
hāpūjā right after her wedding and invited the newly married couple to
perform the worship in the roles of Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄; the parents
_
told me explicitly that the purpose of this puja was to ensure that their daughter
would make the transition to wifehood smoothly and then be happily married.
During the course of a Siddhacakra mahāpūjā (5 January 1999), the ritual
specialist (vidhikār) interspersed ritual instructions and translations with ex-
planations of what was going on in each part of the pūjā. At the start of the pūjā
the ritual specialist gave a lengthy background for the pūjā and its efficacy.
He said: “We do this to create happiness for ourselves, for our families, and
for everyone who comes to the pūjā. We make ourselves auspicious, our
families auspicious, and the whole congregation auspicious. It will illuminate
the greatness of our enlightened and pure religion for all who hear the
ceremony. . . . May I have peace, may the family here [gesturing at the sponsors]
have peace, may the body be healthy and give peace to all life. . . . Maynā and
_
Śrı̄pāl did the worship, veneration, and rituals of the siddhacakra and thereby
worshiped the five highest ones and destroyed the sorrows of the world.
This is the pūjā we are doing today.” His claims for the benefits are focused
on merit and auspiciousness but also on health and peace. The ritual specialist
suggests a clear link between health and well-being similar to that found in the
story.
Later in that same Siddhacakra mahāpūjā, the ritual specialist gave a long
discourse on the various ways siddhacakra worship can heal the body, calling
that worship “religion medicine.” In their most specific context, because of
the centrality of the miraculous healing of Śrı̄pāl’s leprosy, the siddhacakra
worship and the Navpad Olı̄ fast are credited with removing skin diseases.
_
In the Navpadjı̄ Pūjā, one hymn tells us:
Maynāsundarı̄ and Śrı̄pāl kept the vow at that time.

_
It was fruitful and changed his body to a golden hue.
_
In contemporary contexts, many Jains assured me that siddhacakra worship
would prevent leprosy and also the less medically serious, but considerably
more likely, leucoderma; leucoderma, which causes white skin patches, is
particularly abhorrent because of its psychological links to leprosy.28 Because
of its unsightliness and because of the links to leprosy, it can seriously mar
one’s wedding arrangements.29 Thus the fear of leucoderma stems in part from
its being one of few illnesses (along with chicken pox) that leave disfiguring
marks and can seriously damage one’s marriage prospects. Contemporary
Jains told me that pilgrimage to Maynāsundarı̄’s well in Ujjain and bathing
_
with the water there while performing an āyambil fast will cure any skin
disease. Unmarried women (and unmarried men) are acutely aware of the
power of siddhacakra worship and its praksāl to prevent leucoderma, and of the
˙
significance of healthy-looking skin in their marriage prospects. Thus the
protection against skin disease is instrumental in protecting the natural
order in which young women (and men) from good Jain families are well
married and thereby prosper.
Siddhacakra worship, having healed the worshipers, can then grant them
prosperity and marital happiness; in some cases, the granting of prosperity can
be seen as instrumental in ways that mirror the instrumental understanding
of health. The language of the texts often focuses on prosperity gained, but
recall that the description of the siddhacakra’s efficacy in the pūjā manual
suggests that women will receive women’s desires. These desires are not
named (though the text mentions auspicious wifehood and offspring), leaving
contemporary women room to locate their own desires under the rubric of this
worship’s efficacy. Women regularly named the Olı̄ fasts as ones that create
_
marital happiness for a woman generally. One married woman told me that
she had performed the Āyambil Olı̄ in order to have a marriage just like that of
_
Maynā and Śrı̄pāl.30 The Navpad Olı̄ was also performed by two unmarried
_ _
young women in order to secure good husbands, and after their marriages they
both assured me that the Navpad Olı̄ fast garnered them the merit they needed
_
to achieve their marital happiness. Accounts of women linking their marital
happiness to the Olı̄ fasts were legion. Likewise, two more women explained to
_
me that after marriage a woman should worship the siddhacakra every day in
the temple, as Maynāsundarı̄ did, in order to have a marriage like Maynā and
_ _
Śrı̄pāl. After performing the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā, one woman told me that
the ceremony would make all the marriages in the family happy, fruitful,
and prosperous. In all cases the links between the happiness of Śrı̄pāl and
Maynā’s marriage were invoked as the example of the efficacy of siddhacakra
_
worship, and women were explicitly imitating Maynā in order to recreate that
_
ideal marriage.
Ritual and devotional texts support the links between the rituals, the
Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ narrative, and the state of auspicious wifehood and
_
successful manhood granted by the worship. The importance of Śrı̄pāl and
Maynā as the primary performers of the Navpad Olı̄ and the Navpad
_ _
pūjā includes both the ways in which they serve as the paradigmatic worshi-
pers whose acts are imitated, but also as the example of the efficacy of this
worship. In essence, they are the perfect worshipers, while at the same time
their happiness and unity as a couple is the result of this worship. This
loop explains the complex way in which contemporary Jains imitate Śrı̄pāl
and Maynāsundarı̄ in an effort to correctly and most efficaciously perform
_
Navpad pūjā, while at the same time hoping that their worship will make
them more like Śrı̄pāl and Maynā in terms of familial well-being and marital
_
happiness.
The Ideal Marriage
When I asked Jain laywomen about the ideal marriage, they usually named
Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄.31 When asked why this couple was ideal, they often
_
spoke of the importance of a husband and wife working together as a team.
The ideal of complementary spheres and skills suggested areas of expertise
(especially domestic labor and religion) for women as legitimate while main-
taining the socioeconomic power of husbands, who control money and exter-
nal decisions. In my observations, women did control much of the domestic

labor by choosing and cooking meals, by determining domestic needs
(both foods and other goods), by distributing domestic labor and free time,
and prioritizing tasks. Women also performed most of the ritual observances
of the home and determined who performed which rites and when. The
expectation of most men was that the women of their family would be sure
that all the necessary rituals were performed and that the women would
inform them of what was needed to do so. When the ritual involved large
expenditures of capital, labor, and time, women—usually through their moth-
er-in-law—still needed to consult their husband (or head of household) before
beginning. In the ideal marriage, a husband would respect his wife’s expertise,
grant her authority in these areas, and hold these religious practices in great
esteem.
The Couple in a Joint Family

In chapter 3, I discuss the question of what constitutes marital happiness and
intimacy, and how these are linked to bonds of affection between husband
and wife. In the context of specific unhappy marriages, women told me that a
bond of intimacy between husband and wife that cannot be disrupted by his
family protects a wife and therefore makes for a happy marriage. But when
asked abstractly about what constituted an ideal marriage, they told me that
there would be respect and affection between the husband and wife with the
full blessing of his parents. Women were clear that ideal marriages would
include a good relationship with one’s mother-in-law as well as a close tie with
one’s husband. The goal then seems to lie somewhere between—a form of
companionate marriage intimate enough on its own terms to resist disruption
from outside, but not so intimate that it disrupts the other bonds both are
obligated to maintain with the male lineage: the husband is also a son and
brother; and the wife is also a daughter-in-law. In less than ideal circumstances,
a couple might, out of necessity, retreat to a bond of intimacy to maintain
happiness, but the ideal marriage would successfully balance that intimacy
with the larger familial context. One can see, then, how the power of the
Siddhacakra pūjā widens to involve other social positions; the ideal marriage
necessarily involves more than husband and wife receiving the good fortune of
their position.
In the most popular Bengali domestic manual of the nineteenth century,
Conversations with the Wife, the author of the manual posits that within the
ideal marriage a woman has four roles: partner, lover, confidant, and soul-
mate. This manual asserts that these dyadic roles are compatible with the
expectations of the extended family, whose service is subsumed within

(and ultimately subordinated to) the wife’s relationship with the husband
(Walsh 2004, 59–61). With more Indian women watching soap operas on
television and the increased representation of romantic marriages in Indian
media and film (Dwyer 2000, 138–142, 149–153, 156–162; Mankekar 2004,
418–424), it is no wonder that young unmarried women and new brides wish
for romance in their marriages. It is only later that women tended to articulate
the importance of companionship rather than romance for their general well-
being. In common parlance, the “love match” is simultaneously the most
romantic model and the most divisive one. Though many young unmarried
women spoke of how they would like a “love match” in the abstract, most
ultimately participated in and agreed to marriage arrangements organized
by their parents, partly because a “love match,” though romantic, is often
understood to lead to familial rejection, leaving a woman vulnerable outside
her expected social position.
When describing the perfect marriage, most laywomen stressed that the
couple would be religious and perform rituals together. For a woman, deep
involvement in ritual practices by the husband indicates a respect for the area
of knowledge she controls. No woman I have spoken with actually expected or
wanted her husband to do housework—with the exception of those who
wanted their husbands to perform some child care—but all wanted their
husbands to be involved in familial rituals. Within the public culture, rather
than the markers of intimacy within the context of the home and family, it
is the performance of rituals together which marks the intimacy and connec-
tion between a husband and wife. The husband and wife working together
religiously also lends religious prestige to the couple, and that prestige can
have tangible effects on their socioeconomic well-being (Cottom Ellis 1991;
Singhi 1991). The importance of having a married couple perform a ritual
together has its roots in Vedic ritual culture, but in that context, the sacrificer’s
wife provides both auspiciousness and fertile power to the rite (Jamison 1996,
30–42). For Jains, the primary worshipers are women and the presence of
the husband is not credited with adding any particular power (except for a
prestigious luster), but rather performing the ritual together guarantees both
that the husband will benefit from the ritual and that the couple are a religious
couple: virtuous, pious, and prosperous.
Siddhacakra Pūjās: Embodying the Ideal Couple

After Śrı̄pāl is healed, he and Maynāsundarı̄ perform the siddhacakra worship
_
together, and it is this companionate worship, which is reproduced both in
visual images and in conversations I had with Jain women, that distinguished
this couple from others in Jain literature. In those contexts in which their
marriage—rather than Maynā’s virtue—is the focus, the texts speak of their
_
worship together, rather than her teaching and cajoling him into worship.
Contemporary hymns often draw attention to the fact that Śrı̄pāl and Maynā
_
worshiped together as a couple and thus were rewarded as a couple:
She was wed to the leper Śrı̄pal and the two went to the Jain temple.
Meditating on the Navpad, those two both met with victory.
Gunagunāhat no date, 32
_
Throughout the hymns and prayers associated with siddhacakra worship,

Śrı̄pāl and Maynā are the ideal worshipers. One widely available book on the
_
worship and powers of the Navpadjı̄ takes the form of short essays describing
Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄’s acts as a definitive guide for a Jain couple’s behavior
_
(Navpadnā Upāsako 1998). Even when one hymn given as part of the Navpad
pūjā liturgy speaks of King Śrenik (another paradigmatic mythological Jain
_
king) performing the āyambil fast, he does so because he is told of the glorious
results obtained by Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄.
_
King Śrenik asked Gautam: “Who has done this fast before?
_
How is the nine day āyambil fast done? Who obtained their happy
wishes?”
Gautam spoke sweetly, saying: “Listen to what I say, King Śrenik.
_
His disease destroyed, Śrı̄pāl and Maynā obtained liberation.”
_
_
In the context of the siddhacakra, even the great religious King Śrenik is called
_
upon to imitate them.
Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ are likewise visually marked as the great siddha-
_
cakra worshipers. In the Siddhacakra Yantroddhār Brhat Pūjanavidhi pūjā
_
collection, there are two plates of the Siddhacakra mahāyantram and the
Navpad mahāyantram.33 In both plates, there are two supplicants represented
at the base of the yantra: Śrı̄ Śrı̄pāl Mahārājā and Mahāsatı̄ Śrı̄ Maynāsundarı̄.
_
These plates are intended to be guides for the performance of the associated
formal pūjās, as these yantras are reproduced as part of the pūjā (figure 4.1).
In contemporary temple paintings of the siddhacakra yantra, the supplicants
are always identified as Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄. At the Munisuvrata Temple
_
(usually called the “Śrı̄pāl temple”) in Thane, Maharashtra, there is a large
three-dimensional image of the Siddhacakra mahāyantra in the center of the
figure 4.1. Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ are portrayed at the base of the Siddhacakra
˙
mahāyantra as paradigmatic worshipers of the siddhacakra. This image was used by a
ritual specialist to set up the yantra for a Siddhacakra mahāpūjā, Pune 1999.
main area of the temple.34 Installed facing both the yantra and the central
image of the temple are two sculptures: one each of Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄
_
(figure 4.2). This pattern of displaying Śrı̄pāl and Maynā as the patrons of
_
siddhacakra worship is represented in book illustrations, temple paintings,
ritual embroidery, and popular ephemera; in sum, they are shown whenever
figure 4.2. Maynāsundarı̄ statue at Śrı̄ Koṅkan Śatruñjay Tı̄rtha (Munisuvrata Jain
˙ ˙
Temple), Thane, Maharashtra, 2001. Photograph by Steven C. Runge.
the siddhacakra is visually represented in its ritual context. Śrı̄pāl and

Maynāsundarı̄ are presented over and over in these visual materials as both
_
the paradigmatic worshipers and beneficiaries of the powers of the siddha-
cakra, and also as role models for others who wish to reap those benefits.
There are two commonly performed formal pūjās that center on the
siddhacakra as an object of worship: the Navpad pūjā and the Śrı̄ Siddhacakra
mahāpūjā.35 Those who sponsor any of these pūjās are understood to stand
in as Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ in much the same way that sponsors stand in
_
for Indra and Indrānı̄ and Kumārpāl and his queen in other rites. The
_
discourse of kings as sponsors of Jain worship is rampant throughout Jain
ritual practice (Babb 1996; Cort 1998), and in this the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā
is not unusual. However, the importance of the queen, Maynāsundarı̄, as the
_
driving force behind performing this pūjā is unusual. The most commonly
performed pūjā, the Snātra pūjā, is done in imitation of Indra and Indrānı̄,
_
the paradigmatic bathers of the newborn Jinas (Babb 1996, 79), but Indrānı̄ is
_
not given a personality of her own, beyond her identity as Indra’s wife. King
Kumārpāl serves as the ideal Jain king (Cort 1998, 96–106) whose role as
patron of Jainism is reenacted in a grand lamp offering, the Kumārpāl
āratı̄ (Kelting 2009b), and though his wife’s role is likewise reenacted, she
is not even named and has no relevance on her own. In their role as
the consorts of kings, and yet still in near anonymity, these wives are more like
the Vedic sacrificer’s wife (Jamison 1996, 29–41). The other great model for
sponsor is that of the merchant/donor who generally functions without the
presence of a wife.36 While there are other couple pairs who worship the Jinas,
Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ as the paradigmatic worshipers of the siddhacakra
_
serve as the model of the perfect Jain couple. Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ are
_
never constructed as objects of worship but always remain the fully human and
paradigmatic sponsors of siddhacakra worship. It is significant that the
couple remain fully human, and that they are understood to be historical perso-
nages, because their humanity allows the possibility of correct imitation by
contemporary humans.
The Navpad Olı̄ fast and all the rituals of the siddhacakra are performed
_
publicly. The āyambil meal is usually eaten communally, and the ceremonies
associated with the fast are likewise done communally. Though most Jains
worship the siddhacakra alongside the Jina images when doing daily worship,
more formal siddhacakra worship is the center of some of the grandest and
most publicized ceremonies performed at the temple. The public nature
of these rites suggests the ways in which the sponsoring couple stand in for
Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ as role models to be emulated. In contrast with
_
the relatively private Rohinı̄ fast for saubhāgya, the public context of the
_
figure 4.3. A sponsoring couple and the husband’s widowed mother perform the
Siddhacakra mahāpūjā in a clear parallel of the Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ story. Śrı̄
˙
Ajitnāth Jain Derasar, Pune, 1999. Photograph by Steven C. Runge.
siddhacakra rituals illuminates, by association with Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄,

_
the ideal marriage for the community.
When contemporary Jains perform the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā, they do so
in imitation of Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄, and they stand before the congrega-
_
tion as an ideal couple. The Siddhacakra mahāpūjā expands on the shorter
Navpad pūjā by including not only a full liturgy and rosary for each of the
stations (pads) of the siddhacakra but also mantra recitation and offerings for
each of the guardian deities in the multiple rings surrounding the siddhacakra
in the Śrı̄ Siddhacakra mahāyantra (see Figure 4.1). Many other Jain formal
pūjās are ideally performed by a sponsoring couple, but a married couple is
not required. The Siddhacakra mahāpūjā has nine central pūjās—one for each
station—and is unusual in its ritual requirements that all nine of these be
performed by married couples. The couples for each station were carefully
arranged in all three Siddhacakra mahāpūjās that I have observed.37 In 1999,
during a Siddhacakra Mahāpūjā performed on the death anniversary of the
head of a large joint family, the worship of each of the nine stations was
performed in turn by the deceased man’s five sons and their wives, his two
daughters and their husbands, his eldest grandson and his wife, and myself
and my husband. In each case, the widow of the deceased man sat with the
couple and also performed the pūjā (Figure 4.3). This arrangement closely
imitates the idealized vision of marriage described in the Śrı̄ Śrı̄pāl Rājā no
Rās, in which Śrı̄pāl, Maynāsundarı̄, and Śrı̄pāl’s widowed mother perform
_
siddhacakra pūjā together, and also echoes that notion of balanced familial
38
roles discussed earlier. The nine couples and the widow were dressed in pūjā
clothes, and were decorated cardboard crowns, which is a common marker in
Jain rituals of the sponsors of a pūjā, and which is an explicit visual link to the
discourse of the royal patrons of old. Finally, throughout the mahāpūjā, the
hired-in ritual specialist referred to the couple performing the pūjā at any given
time as Śrı̄pāl and Maynā, as both a heuristic for the sponsors’ identities and as
_
an honorific title.
Throughout the complex of texts surrounding the āyambil fasts and sid-
dhacakra worship, we find the story of Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ invoked as
_
proof of efficacy and also as the model of correct praxis for these rituals.
Maynāsundarı̄, too, is idealized as the dharmapatnı̄, the wife whose knowledge
_
and fidelity to religion grant her the authority to teach her husband and his
family proper praxis, and whose own merit brings health and prosperity to her
marital home. When contemporary Jain women perform the Navpad Olı̄ fast
_
and its accompanying Navpad pūjā, they both identify with Maynāsundarı̄ and
_
aspire to her marital happiness and prosperity. The Siddhacakra mahāpūjā is
an enormous ritual and requires the full cooperation and support of one’s
marital family and the participation of one’s husband; it serves as a self-
reflexive wish fulfillment in which Jain couples embody the ideal marriage
before their family and their community, while simultaneously worshiping the
Siddhacakra mahāyantra to achieve that same end. This narrative/ritual com-
plex represents a kind of fantasy in which the perfect couple have the perfect
marriage and their families (signified in the story by their mothers) understand
this perfectly, and because of their perfection as a couple their worship is
likewise perfect and they are justly and generously rewarded.
PART II
Negotiating Discourses
5
Jains and Satı̄mātā Discourse
Jain women negotiate between the ideologies of renunciation and

devoted wifehood (pativratā), which ask a woman to be devoted to
her husband while striving for renunciation.1 The struggle between
these two mutually exclusive ideologies is at the heart of satı̄
narratives associated with Rājul. Jains overtly reject the rites of dying
with one’s husband that are associated with Hindu satı̄s because of
its links to suicide, passion, and violence. In addition, because of
Jain injunctions against satı̄ rites of dying and because of the
criminalization of satı̄ worship after 1987, Jains do not admit
publicly to performing satı̄mātā worship—though there are certainly
some who worship satı̄mātās in their families’ shrines or on
pilgrimage.2 The Jains with whom I conduct research are Gujarati
and Rajasthani (mostly Marwari), and are therefore from the
regional ethnic groups who have venerated satı̄mātās most
enthusiastically. There are some Rajasthani inscriptions spanning
nearly a thousand years of Jain women who died with their
husbands (Somani 1982, 78–80).3 Though Rajasthani inscriptional
and British colonial evidence suggest few Jain women died with
their husbands (Major 2007, 459), because of intermarriage between
Hindu and Jain families of shared castes (Babb 2004, 145; Cort
2001b, 58)4 and because of Jain mythological ties to now rejected
Rajput caste status (Babb 2004, 147–181), some Jains may indeed
claim ancestors who themselves were satı̄s and are worshiped as
satı̄mātās in the family shrine or as lineage goddesses (kuldevı̄ ).5
110 NEGOTIATING DISCOURSES
Hindus refer to the rite of dying with one’s deceased husband as becoming
a “satı̄,” “dying with [one’s husband]” (sahamarana), or “going with [one’s
_
husband]” (sahagamana). However much Jains may reject the rite of a woman
dying with her husband, the discourse of satı̄—marked by visual, verbal, and
gestural signs—continues to exercise a powerful influence on the ways that
Jains represent female virtue. Jains use the term “satı̄” to refer to those women
whose virtue is exemplary and whose fidelity to Jainism is unwavering. As we
have seen in chapter 1, the term satı̄ refers to a spectrum of virtuous wives in the
South Asian context and even more widely in a Jain context, where it includes
women who have never been wives at all.6 However, at its most ideologically
powerful, Jain satı̄ discourse is linked to examples of virtuous wifehood.
Jain satı̄ narratives more often than not end with the satı̄ becoming a nun, and
in most cases their ordination serves as an inevitable Jain coda to their story,
illustrating the ongoing discursive power of Jain renunciation ideologies. Those
satı̄s who do not renounce are often attributed future births as Jinas or an
intermediary birth in heaven. The links between satı̄ discourse and renunciation
in the Jain tradition lead to a particular form of husband devotion in which the satı̄
follows her husband into mendicancy. Though there are several narratives that
follow this story motif, by far the most famous and most commonly retold is that
of Rājul (called Rājı̄matı̄ in earlier texts) and Nemi.7 I argue in this chapter that the
renunciation of the satı̄ Rājul can be read as a form of “going with one’s husband”
(sahagamana) in which she follows her husband, Nemi, into a social death of
ordination (dı̄ksā) and is therefore venerated as a kind of Jain satı̄mātā. More
˙
broadly, this reading of the Rājul story is supported by the Jain images of Rājul,
lay Jain devotional practices, and songs associated with Rājul, all of which subtly
suggest her identity as a satı̄mātā. The reasons for this identity are probably both a
response to the broader ideologies of pativratā and satı̄ in western India and the
desire of Jains to participate in western Indian literary expressions of romance.
In 2001, while I conducted research on Jain satı̄ narratives and the
practices associated with them, I was struck by the portrayal of the satı̄ Rājul.
One particular painting at the Amı̄jharā Pārśvanāth Jain temple in Junnar,
Maharashtra, remains vivid in my mind (figure 5.1). Rājul is portrayed follow-
ing Nemi up Girnār Hill after he rejected her in order to renounce. Dressed in
her wedding finery, with her right hand raised, she follows his chariot proces-
sion. This vision of Rājul contrasted with the representations of virtuous
women I had seen in other Jain visual materials (temple paintings, book
illustrations, and soon.) in which the woman is portrayed either as a nun or
as a chaste, restrained wife. Rājul’s passionate posture, hand gesture, and
expression seemed out of place in a Jain world of restrained virtue and devotion
(figure 5.2).8 In fact, the image resonated in my mind with Hindu devotional
figure 5.1. Rājul and Nemi ceiling painting showing Nemi’s rejection of Rājul, Rājul’s
following of him up Mount Gı̄rnār, their subsequent renunciations, and at the top, their
simultaneous liberation. In each episode, Rājul is shown close by Nemi. Amı̄jharā
Pārśvanāth Jain Temple, Junnar, Maharashtra, 2001.
figure 5.2. Detail from Rājul and Nemi ceiling painting showing Rājul (labeled
Rājimatı̄) chasing Nemi up Mount Gı̄rnār with her arm outstretched while Nemi looks
back at her. Jain Temple, Junnar, Maharashtra.
portrayals of the procession of the satı̄ (Courtright 1994, 32 fig. 1; Noble and
Sankhyan 1994, 381 plate 5H). This visual congruence joined in my thinking
with a genre of Jain devotional songs I had been collecting since 1993 called
cundadı̄ gı̄t (or veil songs) whose protagonist is always Rājul.9 The popular
_
songs and visual materials gestured at the discourse of satı̄mātās while staying
within the bounds of Jain ideologies of renunciation and nonviolence. Within
the sphere of Jain discourse, Rājul verges perilously close to being a satı̄mātā.
This chapter will examine a number of tellings of the Rājul story in a
variety of genres and, when appropriate, contextualize those tellings in con-
temporary ritual. The version of the Nemi and Rājul story that is most familiar
to Jain laywomen is drawn from the eighteenth-century Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak
layman Devcand’s Nemanāthno Saloko, which is recited annually on Śrāvan
bright fifth.10 In my observation, it was recited by most of the married
women in the congregation, and they believed that reciting this text (or even
just listening to its recitation) helped ensure one had a happy marriage.11
Devcand’s version includes extensive homey details about the preparations
(and the women involved in the recitations savored these passages) and perfor-
mance of Nemi and Rājul’s wedding. Though the text lingers over each step
of preparation, for our purposes in this chapter we will focus mostly on Nemi’s
rejection of Rājul and its aftermath. I summarize the general story below.
¯ JUL’S STORY
RA
After much cajoling, the Jina-to-be Nemi was engaged to Rājul, the
daughter of King Ugrasen. When Nemi’s wedding procession arrived
at Rājul’s home on the day of their wedding, he was blessed by Rājul’s
mother at the threshold of the door. Then Nemi heard the crying of the
animals to be killed for the wedding feast, felt compassion for the
animals and disgust for the world, and he decided to renounce. He
turned around and left his bride, Rājul, standing at the threshold of
her house. Rājul lamented her fate, but after fifty-one days, when
Nemi obtained omniscience and it was clear that he was not
returning, Rājul resolved to follow Nemi to Girnār and renounce with
him. Finally, Rājul and Nemi achieved liberation at their deaths on the
same day and were, in a sense, reunited.
Rājul and the Ideology of Renunciation
Although few lay Jains are familiar with the actual text of the Uttarādhyayana
Sūtra, the second of the Śvetāmbar mūlasūtras, it is known to most Śvetāmbar
JAINS AND SATĪMĀTĀ DISCOURSE 113
Jain mendicants, who are expected to study this text in their first year of
mendicancy (Cort 2001a).12 The Uttarādhyayana Sūtra (22:1–49) contains the
earliest extant version of the story of Nemi and Rājul (here she is called
Rājı̄matı̄). In this version of the story, the goals served are the celebration
of compassion, the glorification of renunciation, and the vilification of the
(female) body. The Uttarādhyayana Sūtra telling serves as the key source for
the basic frame of the story; later elaborations by monks are clearly informed by
this early and authoritative telling.
The Uttarādhyayana Sūtra version begins with a brief description of how
the wedding is arranged and the wedding preparations leading up to the
moment of Nemi’s renunciation. After Nemi renounces, Rājı̄matı̄ follows
him immediately, framing her renunciation as a response to the shame of
being abandoned by Nemi, saying: “it is better I should turn nun” (Uttarād-
hyayana Sūtra 22: 29).13 There is no engagement with what it might mean for
a Jain woman to be jilted in this way, but there is a recognition of how narrow
her future options might be; nunhood appears better than spinsterhood or
abandoned wifehood. In her abandonment, the quick decision of Rājı̄matı̄
to renounce flattens any sense of narrative tension; her decision is so automatic
that it can be understood to represent a normative ideal, a kind of pure
conventionality: the choices are clear and the correct answer is obvious. Rājı̄-
matı̄ does not show much interest in renunciation at this point in the story—
she shows more an air of resignation.14 However, after the last section, in
which Rājı̄matı̄’s fidelity to her vows is elaborated, the story is resituated within
the ideology of renunciation.
The climax of the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra version reminds the reader of the
centrality of renunciation and the importance of being steadfast in one’s
renunciation.
On her way to Mount Raivataka (Girnār) [where Nemināth is] after

herself renouncing, Rājı̄matı̄ is caught in the rain and ducks into a
cave to dry off.
She removes her clothing to let it dry. At this point she is seen by
the monk Rathanemi, who is also Nemi’s elder brother. He
approaches her. telling her to first have an affair with him and then
become a nun after they have enjoyed all the worldly pleasures of this
rare human birth. Rājı̄matı̄ does not accept Rathanemi’s proposal but
instead gives him a sermon, which transforms Rathanemi into an
ideal monk.
The Uttarādhyayana Sūtra’s version centers around this sermon on the impor-
tance of renunciation, which climaxes with an oft-repeated image: “Fie upon
you, famous knight, who want to quaff the vomited drink for the sake of this
life; it would be better for you to die” (Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 22: 42).15 Rājı̄matı̄
continues to lecture him for three more verses on the need for self-control.
Rathanemi is convinced by her sermon, and they proceed to practice austerities
until they both attain omniscience and liberation from rebirth.
Though the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra version of the Nemi and Rājul story is
referred to by the name “Rathanemi,” telling the reader that the key charac-
ter—the one whose transformation is relevant to this telling—is Rathanemi, it
is clearly the rhetorical power of Rājı̄matı̄’s sermon that takes the center stage.
In equating her embodied self with “vomit,” Rājı̄matı̄ sees herself as already
used by Nemi, her husband, though rejected by him, that is vomited. Rājı̄matı̄
is the abject consequence—the collateral damage, as it were—of Nemi’s renun-
ciation. But it is Rājı̄matı̄’s recognition of her own abjectness that is genuinely
instructive, not Nemi’s renunciation or Rathanemi’s renunciation. Rathanemi’s
redemption, then, comes from his rejection of Rājı̄matı̄’s worthless and vile
body. She describes herself as vomit, worse than leftovers than have not been
ingested; but in doing so, Rājı̄matı̄ upholds the moksa-mārg ideology, which
˙
sees the material body as something to view with disgust and ultimately
renounce. Nemi rejects food (the flesh to be served at his wedding) and
renounces, and by renouncing he rejects sexuality (the flesh, as it were, of
his beautiful bride Rājı̄matı̄); this act echoes in the Rathanemi episode where
Rājı̄matı̄ tells Rathanemi to reject sexuality (in the form of her body) because it
is rejected food (vomit).16 Rājı̄matı̄’s redemption in the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra
comes from her renunciation, her rejection of the potential pleasures from her
vomited (viscerally rejected) body. Her recognition of her low and inauspicious
status as a “vomited bride” is evidence of true Jain wisdom, and she uses it to
both protect herself from Rathanemi and to convert him to correct Jainism.
From Vomited Bride to Abandoned Wife
The Uttarādhyayana Sūtra does provide the potential for reframing Rājı̄matı̄ in
pativratā discourse. Interestingly, in ways that indicate some recognition of the
liminal state Rājı̄matı̄ occupies, her actions are seen to protect her family and
lineage, even though she has renounced them: “The daughter of the best
king, true to self-control and her vows, maintained the honour of her clan
and family, and her virtue” (Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 22: 40). Rājı̄matı̄’s protec-
tion of her virtue extends to her protection of Rathanemi’s virtue, as well.17
Thus Rājı̄matı̄’s rejection of worldly life and its pleasures as named by Ratha-
nemi ultimately protects Nemi’s lineage by maintaining the virtue of both their
daughter-in-law Rājı̄matı̄ and their elder son Rathanemi.18 The body hate
prominent in the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra narrative is diminished (or removed)
in later tellings of the story and replaced by Rājı̄matı̄’s renunciation as a
continuation of her steadfast devotion to Nemi. As soon as Jain writers begin
to sympathize with Rājı̄matı̄, room opens up for an emotional reality of her as a
woman; any narrative that characterizes her with an interior life will inevitably
create tensions between the idealization both of detachment for renouncers
and of passionate attachment for wives.
Hitavijay’s Rājı̄matı̄ Sajjhāy tells the story of the Rājı̄matı̄ and Rathanemi
episode.19 But here, Rājul’s sermon is about her fidelity to Nemi and the pitfalls
of lust in general, not the rejection of her own body. Even considering the
origin of this encounter, which clearly sets the hymn in the context of renunci-
ation, we see Rājı̄matı̄ as a pativratā.20 This sajjhāy focuses on Rathanemi’s
offers of romantic love and Rājul’s resistance, not to romantic love in general
but rather to infidelity to her husband, Nemi:
Bow to the feet of the true guru, Rājı̄matı̄ Satı̄!

She kept unbroken celibacy, and enlightened her brother-in-law.
With veneration and love for her lord, that lovely woman went to
Mount Raivat.
On the road, it rained and lightning flashed in all four directions.
Her silk veil (cunadı̄ ) wet, she went into a nearby cave.
_
Her younger brother-in-law (devar) saw this and abandoned his
meditation and his intelligence.
That monk said these words: “Having seen these eyes like a deer’s,
Lust (madhurā) has taken control of me, I have fallen in love with
you.”
[Rājı̄matı̄ answers:] “Abandon this childishness! Is this not the way
to hell?
Temptation is a horrible passion, will you fall into the ocean of
desires?”
[Rathanemi replies:] “Beautiful One! Listen and learn this, a lotus
has taken root in my heart.
Tell me, fearful one, what is the sin in this?”
[Rājı̄matı̄ answers:] “Youth is aflame, so knowledge stays separate
from lust.”
[Rathanemi replies:] “The days of our youth are few, O moon-faced
one! Taste the nectar of them!
[Rājı̄matı̄ replies:] “Why do you have such a low opinion of that
great ascetic of the Yadav family [Nemināth]?
I am not bound to you, go gain the benefits of the assembly hall.

Because of the Jina’s great honour, Indra held the yak-tail whisk.”
[Rathanemi thinks:] “This woman of our proud lineage, whose acts
are the picture of purity was left behind [by Nemi].
This satı̄’s well-spoken lesson, lifted love out of the ocean of
emotion.”
“Those who protect a man’s chastity, [are] equal to Indra” said the
Jina.
Hitavijay says: “Thus Rājul was brought to the eternal place of
liberation.”
Bow to the feet of the true guru, Rājı̄matı̄ Satı̄!
Jain Sajjhāymālā 1986/1987, 405
_
Rājı̄matı̄’s speech suggests to us both the social problem of the jilted bride and
the emotional position that Rājul sees herself in. Rājı̄matı̄ first tries to convince
Rathanemi of the sin of lust, but he continues to press his suit. Then she
reminds him that she is devoted to Nemi and that his seduction stains the
virtue of his lineage. Pride of lineage ultimately convinces Rathanemi of
Rājı̄matı̄’s virtue, and she is granted liberation, it argues, because she was
able to protect Rathanemi’s virtue.
In Devcand’s Nemanāthnno Saloko, Rājul’s interstitial status is clearly
articulated by the threshold of the house. Nemi arrives at the door of Rājul’s
house and is ritually welcomed by his future mother-in-law when she performs
a ritual (ponkhanā) that both removes the evil eye from the groom and accepts
_
him as the groom (Jādav 1975, 48–50). At contemporary weddings, I have
observed that this rite is directly followed by the bride garlanding the groom (in
a symbolic self-choice marriage—svayamvara). The rite at the door starts the
rites of the wedding proper and marks the shift from preparations for a
wedding to the marriage itself. In the Nemanāthno Saloko, from the point at
which the ponkhanā is performed for Nemi, Rājul is referred to as a queen
_
(rānı̄) rather than the unmarried princess (rājkumārı̄ ), illustrating the belief
_
that from this moment on Rājul is a wife.21
It is immediately after that moment that Nemi hears the animals crying
and renounces. Rājul sees Nemi turn away, and she laments and gives a speech
in which she sums up her humiliation:
My eyes are lowered in shame,

The rubbing of turmeric (pı̄thı̄ cola) was done,
_
The procession set out after having come here, without shame.
Nemanāthno Saloko, 69
The rite of turmeric rubbing (pı̄thı̄ cola) mingles the groom’s substances with
_
the bride by rubbing—or pouring, if it is mixed in the bath water—the
turmeric that has been rubbed on the groom onto the body of the bride. This
is an act of bodily intimacy, which links the couple bodily and sexually, and
Rājul is devastated that she has been abandoned after this rite has been done.
Jains listening to this story would be aware of the significance of this act and
would recognize that Rājul’s purity has been compromised.22 At this moment,
then, she is no longer an unmarried princess, and neither can she be said to be
purely virginal; though the rites have not been completed and the marriage is
not yet consummated, the couple has been bodily and socially comingled in
ways that are irreversible. To be abandoned at this moment is catastrophic: she
is not able to marry someone else, because she is as good as married. She has no
home; she is not fully integrated into her marital identity because the wedding
rites remain incomplete and she is not living with her husband’s family.23 As a
result of Nemi’s renunciation, Rājul is suspended between these two identities
of virginal daughter and wife, much in the same way she is suspended at the
doorway: she can now no longer stay at home, having let go of her childhood
identity, nor can she step out into the world, where she has no place.
The Devoted Lover
There is an important shift that occurs in medieval Jain poetry about Rājul and
Nemi, in which Rājul is no longer the vomited bride/nun but a devoted and
suffering lover who awaits—in vain—her lover’s return. In medieval poetic
forms of phāgu (four-month rainy-season poems) and bārahmāsā (twelve-
month poems), Jain monks wrote of the love of Rājul for Nemi. The oldest
known phāgus and viraha bārahmāsā (twelve-month poems of separation)
were Jain works dedicated to the story of Nemi and Rājul (Vaudeville 1986,
17).24 In these early tellings the Rathanemi episode is decentered, and Rājul’s
renunciation is presented as the perfect example of not abandoning love; she
gives up the world of marriage but maintains her connection to her husband,
albeit in a reformulated structure.25 The phāgu and bārahmāsā poetic forms
describe each month in turn, linking the natural environment and seasons
with the states of emotion in the protagonist. Though the bārahmāsā poems
sometimes use the twelve-month form to describe the religious or agricultural
year or as a narrative epic lasting a year, Jain versions focus instead on the
suffering of the lover in separation and the trials of chastity. Vaudeville trans-
lates Vinayacandrasūri’s early-fourteenth-century poem Rājal-Bārahmāsā—the
first of the Jain bārahmāsās of separation (Vaudeville 1986, 37)—as her

example of the many bārahmāsā poems dedicated to Nemi and Rājul.26
Right after Nemi leaves Rājul, she and her girlfriend begin their twelve-
month conversation.
In the month of Shrāvan, the clouds roar loudly

and my body is burnt in the fire of Separation
Flashes of lightning, to me, are like devouring monsters:
O my friend, how shall I survive without Nemi?
Vaudeville 1986, 98
Rājul’s suffering is not focused here on shame and disgust—as it is in

the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra—but rather on separation. This genre uses lush
poetic detail to lend emotional expression to a moment that in the Uttarād-
hyayana Sūtra is represented coldly and without emotional content. Further,
the bārahmāsā poetry centers Rājul’s virtue around her fidelity rather than her
detachment from the world.
Devcand’s Nemanāthno Saloko represents Rājul’s lament as well, turning
from questions of fate, to a startling embodied exclamation of her love for
Nemi.
“From where did my fate arise;

It must be the evil eye that made this happen,”
Queen Rājul laments.
“You cannot know the timing of your karma’s results”;
Waiting through eight births for her beloved,
And in the ninth of nine lives, this young woman is soiled.
Return and live the ninth with your beloved, Nem, . . .
She went to Nem and grabbed his feet;
“I want to be with my beloved!”
Nemanāthno Saloko 66–68, 74
One can see a certain ambivalence here: on the one hand, strictly Jain reflec-
tions of fate and karma, and the echo (in “soiled”) of the abject, instructive
body; on the other hand, the exchange ends with the passionate grabbing
of feet and exclamation. Clearly, it is not a cold consideration of her low
state in the context of moksa-mārg ideology that leads her to Nemi. To the
˙
extent that Rājul’s decision to follow Nemi is narratively prompted by
passion, these retellings of the story become less centered in moksa-mārg
˙
ideologies of passionless equanimity and are more devotional; the listener
is presumed to identify with Rājul herself, and the representations of her following
Nemi into mendicancy shifts away from theories of the body (and the instructive
shock value of vomit) to the discourse of devotion. The texts become less didactic,
and more characterized: Rājul’s decision to renounce is the decision of a particular
person in a particular context, not a logical, normative outcome exemplified in
the object of a body. The tension in this transformation lies in its injection of
romantic love—rather than merely the acceptable emotion of disgust with the
worldly (vairāgya)—into what had been an exemplar of Jain moksa-mārg ideology.
˙
The context of Rājul’s lament borrows is discourse from that of the pativratā/bhakta:
“I want to be with my beloved” and, later in the same text: “Eager to go and join
her Beloved, Ugrasen’s daughter has taken leave of all” (Vaudeville 1986, 105), both
of which echo the exclamations of the satı̄mātā when she hears of her husband’s
death: “I am going to follow my husband” (Weinberger-Thomas 2000, 22).
Paralleling this emotionally wrought devotion, there is a hymn in a con-
temporary stavan collection, Gunagunāhat (1987, 73) titled “Rājul’s Lament”.
_
“What fault of mine is in this, why did you abandon me and go so
far away?
Come back, O beloved, my eyes beg helplessly.
The waters of hope fill my eyes.”
Rājul laments while reciting Nem’s name in her heart.

“We will meet again in liberation, O Lord,
I remain yours and you are my destiny.”
Rājul sees that Nemi, having renounced, is no longer her husband in this
lifetime, but she asserts that they will be joined again after death—“in libera-
tion”—because of their linked destinies. Creeping into the story along with the
emotional content are echoes of the other regional hegemonic discourse involv-
ing wives following husbands—that of the satı̄mātā. Rājul’s participation in satı̄
discourse has its roots in early versions of the story and develops in the context
of Jainism as a western Indian tradition. As Nemi is marked as the Gujarati Jina,
so too Rājul is defined as western Indian and marked by the particulars of
pativratā and satı̄ discourse in that region. All elaborations and contemporary
uses of the story suggest a Jain response to the seemingly contradictory ideol-
ogies of devotion to husband and renunciation which are ultimately resolved
through the invocation of satı̄ discourse. Satı̄ discourse was a key representation
of fidelity in medieval Jain texts as well as in Hindu literature, and this model of
fidelity flourishes in the telling of the Rājul and Nemi story.
Renunciation as Death, Renunciation as “Going with” One’s

Husband
The rite of “going with” one’s husband into death has parallels with certain
narrative moments in and visual representations of Rājul’s renunciation.
Nemi’s renunciation leaves Rājul a functional widow, and her own renuncia-
tion ultimately remedies that flaw in much the same way that a satı̄mātā’s
death redeems her flawed wifehood. Nemi and Rājul’s ordinations invoke of
the discourse of a satı̄ following her husband into death. She follows Nemi as a
wife even though she no longer has a husband, which resonates with the
symbology of the Hindu satı̄s who remain auspicious wives after their hus-
bands die. My argument here hinges in part on the ways that Jain ordination as
a social death dissolves marriage, on the visual cues present in the ordination
of a Śvetāmbar Jain nun, on the use of satı̄ discourse in medieval and modern
Rājul texts, and finally on the temple images and popular visual representa-
tions of Nemi and Rājul’s renunciation.
Renunciation in brahmanical Hinduism carries with it strong symbology
of death and rebirth (Olivelle 1992, 92). Renunciation signals that the Hindu
ascetic is socially dead, in part, by dissolving the ascetic’s marriage and ending
his dharmic requirements (Olivelle 1992, 90). The renouncer specifically
invokes his own death by performing a symbolic funeral for himself.27 Jain
ordination includes the same basic steps as Hindu renunciation except for
the symbolic funeral. Though Jain ordination rites do not include a funeral, we
can see within the ritual the shadows of death imagery in the dispersal of
worldly goods and the shared social disengagement, which dissolves familial
obligations.28 In addition, like Hindu renunciation, Jain ordination severs
all social and legal ties—including marriage—between the renouncer and his
or her family.
Jains resist the overt image of funerals in ordinations, however. Funerals
are very inauspicious, and Jain mendicants do not carry any of the potential
inauspiciousness that Hindu ascetics do.29 Jain mendicants are completely
isolated from inauspiciousness.30 That said, Jain ordination clearly frames
itself as a separation from family and normal social intercourse.31 For the
purposes of our discussion, it is this social “death” that is relevant because it
is Nemi’s social “death,” which leaves Rājul as a kind of widow. Though many
scholars have described the ordination of Jain mendicants using bridal imagery
(Holmstrom 1988, 20; Shāntā 1997, 460; Singhi 1991, 150; Vallely 2002, 91),
this interpretation is weakened by the visual and gestural discourse of Jain
ordinations.32 Much of the imagery interpreted as deriving from weddings

fits more comfortably in the discourse of satı̄. In essence, it is inauspiciousness
that is absent at a Jain ordination; by using satı̄ discourse, death imagery that
may be associated with Hindu dı̄ksā is elided in much the same manner
˙
that widowhood is elided in Hindu satı̄mātā narratives and visual discourse.
In a sense, becoming a nun prevents Rājul’s widowhood by transforming the
inauspiciousness of a woman without a husband into the auspiciousness of
a woman on the path of liberation.
To frame my argument, I will start with a description of the rite of dying
with a husband. This rite is described in devotional Hindu satı̄mātā narratives
with characteristic stages. First, after the death of husband, the satı̄ gives a
statement of intention to die as a satı̄ (Harlan 1994, 83; Major 2007; Weinber-
ger-Thomas 2000, 21); as a result, sat (a form of power associated with the
virtues and vows of devoted wifehood) begins to rise in the woman’s
body, making her hot to the touch.33 Second, the satı̄ refuses to dress as a
widow. Harlan (1996, 237) describes the moment when the satı̄ dresses in her
wedding finery as the moment at which she begins to be a satı̄, and thus
_
the auspicious and lovely ornaments (śr ngār) of the satı̄ feature centrally in
_
satı̄mātā songs. The Hindu satı̄’s denial of a separation from her husband
is marked by her wearing wedding clothes, rather than a widow’s simple
clothes of mourning.
Third, on the day of the cremation, the satı̄ takes her last bath and then
dresses herself as a bride: with henna on her hands, a wedding sari, her
wedding veil, wedding jewelry, and with her hair loose. Though some of the
early European accounts of “suttees” describe her as dressed more like an
ascetic (Major 2007, 36), other European and Indian accounts and virtually
all contemporary narratives, images, and accounts center around the satı̄ being
dressed as a bride with loose hair. The satı̄’s self-representation as auspicious
bride (and its iconization) is key to the religious logic of the rite (Harlan 1995b,
270; Weinberger-Thomas 2000). She is not a widow; she continues to be a wife
because her vow and her self-immolation symbolically compress ritual time,
so that there is no moment of widowhood between her husband’s death and the
mingling of their bodies (as ashes) at the cremation (Courtright 1995, 188–189;
Harlan 1994, 81).
Fourth, as the satı̄ leaves her home for the last time to go to the cremation
grounds, she places her hand (or hands) in kunku _ m paste and leaves a
_
handprint (or a pair of handprints) at the threshold of the house. These
34
handprints are preserved and venerated. After this is done, she cannot return
to her house ever again.35
Fifth, when her husband’s body is processed to the cremation grounds, she
follows the body to the cremation ground either on foot, in a bullock cart, or
on horseback. This procession is usually accompanied by drumming or a
band, and many appreciative viewers who throw rice, betel nuts, and coins
and offer her coconuts. When she arrives at the funeral pyre, she distributes
her special jewelry to those closest to her (Harlan 1992, 151; Major 2007;
Weinberger-Thomas 2000, 101, 138) along with blessings and curses (Harlan
1992, 138–153).36 She circumambulates the funeral pyre and then seats herself
with her husband’s head on her lap. The pyre is lit, it is argued, by the power of
her sat even when someone uses a torch to light the wood, too. It is only at her
death that she becomes a satı̄mātā (Harlan 1994, 81). Future worship of her as
a satı̄mātā focuses on representations of her cremation or icons such as
the trident, each draped in wedding veils and marked with both kunku _ m
_
and sandalwood paste (Noble and Sankhyan 1994; Weinberger-Thomas
2000, fig. 15).
Though no Jain in my research has ever asserted any such connection, the
ordination of a Jain nun provides the viewer with visual cues that resonate with
the Hindu rite of becoming a satı̄. In February 1994, I was able to attend most
of the rites surrounding the ordination of a young unmarried Marwari woman,
and I have since observed parts—particularly processions—of several others. It
is from this observation, interviews, and the accounts of others (Banks 1992,
78; Shāntā 1997, 460–466; Vallely 2002, 77–114) that I draw this picture of
Jain ordination. Śvetāmbar Jain ordinations for nuns seem to invoke bridal
imagery.37 During the procession leading to the ordination itself, the Mūrtipū-
jak initiate is dressed in fine silks—usually a red wedding sari—with gold and
pearl jewelry, and with both her hands and feet hennaed (Banks 1992, 78;
Shāntā 1997, 460).38 In times past, young Terāpanthı̄ women would also wear
a bride’s wedding veil, though this practice has been banned by the present
leader of the Terāpanthı̄ order (Holmstrom 1988, 20; Vallely 2002, 91).39 This
apparent wedding imagery is disrupted, however, by several key visible prac-
tices—loose hair, the particular rites of the threshold, the procession of
women, and the blessings and gifting performed by the woman renounc-
ing—which run counter to the visual discourse and practices of Jain weddings.
In the days leading up to her ordination, the Jain initiate is dressed in fine
clothes and fêted, and her hands and feet are covered in henna. Before the
ordination itself, the initiate takes her last bath and is dressed in wedding
clothes and jewelry with her hair loose, and is led in procession to the rite.40
The Hindu satı̄mātā presents a similar visual image, processing to the rite
dressed in wedding finery with loose hair. In both cases, the loose hair is a
statement of feminine power (śaktı̄), which these auspicious women share with
goddesses. Though the ordination itself involves removing all the renouncer’s
hair, she approaches the rite with the symbolic statement of her feminine
power.41 Loose clean hair invokes not the bride—whose hair would be carefully
dressed and covered—but goddesses, satı̄mātās, and feminine power (śaktı̄).
When the Jain initiate is prepared to leave her home for the last time, she
is asked to step in kunku _ m paste and leave red footprints as she leaves the
_
house. After the footprints have been made, the initiate cannot return to
this house again (except perhaps to gather alms). The sheet on which these
footprints are made is then carefully stored in the family cupboard and saved as
a special blessing, which is believed to protect the well-being of the nun’s
renounced family. There is a similar rite performed at weddings in Rajasthan
in which a new bride steps in kunku _ m paste and walks across a sheet as she
_
enters her marital home for the first time.42 Similarly, I observed that when
new brides entered their marital home for the first time, they sometimes
marked the wall of the house with their handprints as a statement of their
blessing. Occasionally, when a family entered a new house for the first time
(especially if it was of new construction), the eldest saubhāgyavatı̄ marked the
walls with her red handprints in blessing. These blessing evoke the image
of the marks (especially the footprints) of Laksmı̄, which are drawn at the
˙
threshold as if she were entering the house to bless it. However, the reversal of
the direction at a Jain dı̄ksā (leaving rather than entering) is relevant. The red
˙
footprints are not made after the dı̄ksā rite when the woman is at her most
˙
auspicious, nor are they made as she enters the space where her dı̄ksā will be
˙
performed. Neither are red footprints made by a bride as she leaves her
mother’s house, which would parallel the case of the dı̄ksā footprints. Finally,
˙
the initiate’s footprints are made in kunku _ m, not saffron, in spite of saffron’s
_
clear links to renunciation. Though it certainly differs from the satı̄mātā’s
handprints at the threshold of her marital home, these footprints at leaving
resonate with that threshold mark more than with the entrance of an auspi-
cious woman into the home, particularly because they are said to be a mark of
her intention to leave and never return.
Satı̄ processions and Jain ordination parades share some of the visual
discourse of the royal procession (the chariot, the musicians, umbrellas, and
so on), but the salient signs (other than the umbrella) of the royal procession
are absent from both: elephants, fly whisks, shoes, turban, and throne
(Gonda 1966, 35).43 Although Jain texts and rituals engage deeply with the
model of the cakravartin and the kingly patron (in particular, the king of
the gods, Indra/Śakra, and the mytho-historic Jain kings; Kumārpāl and
_
Śrı̄pāl), the discourse of Jain dı̄ksā of men is an explicit rejection of kingship.
˙
The varsidān (year-long giving) procession is in imitation of Mahāvı̄r’s
˙
renunciation, which, though it may draw on the idiom of kingly procession in

its use of chariots and bands (the imaginary of what resources Mahāvı̄r might
have had), ultimately is a leaving behind of the social world, including king-
ship. In addition, kingly processions are performed by kings; in other words,
the dı̄ksā of a Jain monk may be read as a reversed kingly procession, because it
˙
is a man dressed as a king (in imitation of a king who renounces). However, as
a rule, queens do not process except when they choose to die as a satı̄. Satı̄
processions, then, are a kind of royal procession, but one that differs in form,
content, and intention from the king’s procession.
Jain ordination processions are accompanied by bands playing auspicious
music, and the sides of the road are filled with onlookers who benefit from
seeing the culmination of Jain religious values. The procession itself repre-
sents another rupture from wedding imagery. Although men process to their
weddings in Jain and most other South Asian groups, women are never
processed. A bride is carefully kept out of the public eye until the wedding
begins, and even then attempts are made to obscure the public view of her face
and body through veiling and a protective cordon of relatives. In a Jain ordina-
tion, the initiate is seated in a silver chariot and processed through the streets
not merely as an icon but also engaging with onlookers, throwing handfuls of
rice, almonds, and coins to the onlookers. This distribution of worldly goods is
justified as the year-long donation (varsidān) performed by the Jina, Mahāvı̄r,
˙
himself when he renounced. Though the objects thrown to the onlookers are
actually the rejected wealth of the initiate, each item collected was instead seen
as a form of blessed object returned from a holy or divine person (prasād).44
Others approached the initiate with coconuts, which they would hand to her
and which she would return to them in an exchange that was understood to
bless the coconut as a kind of prasād. The blessed almonds and coconuts (as
well as flowers) that the initiate distributed were carefully brought home and
placed in house shrines alongside distributed photos of the woman ordained.
The procession begins with a chariot bearing a Jina image. Jainism can be read
as a mortuary cultus centered around the worship of deceased perfected beings
(Babb 1996, 103; Granoff 1992, 189–195). Thus, because the ordinations of
nuns are explicitly linked to Rājul’s story, we can read the procession such that
the initiate, in imitating Rājul, follows the Jina—the deceased perfected being
standing in for Nemi—in a way that echoes the satı̄ following the corpse of her
husband.
After her vow to renounce—marked by her acceptance of the mendicant’s
cloth broom—she retreats to renounce her final possessions. Before retreating,
she circumambulates a Jina image three times and then offers blessings to all
of those who have come to watch her dı̄ksā (figure 5.3). As she removes her
˙
figure 5.3. A newly ordained nun still dressed in the auspicious clothing and jewelry
of a laywoman holds aloft the rajoharan broom that she has just received, marking her
˙
renunciation. She blesses those who have come to watch her ordination. Dādāwadı̄
˙
Mandir, Pune, 1994.
finery, she gives her jewelry to particular individuals (usually, but not always,
family members). This gifting of the young woman initiate’s personal jewelry
to particular persons with personal meaning is not only not prescribed, but
runs counter to the equanimity with which Mahāvı̄r arbitrarily distributes his
wealth. However, it does recall the gifting of jewelry by a Hindu satı̄ before she
mounts the funeral pyre (Weinberger-Thomas 2000, 101, 138). After giving
away her jewelry, the Jain initiate removes all of her hair, and changes into the
white sari of a Jain nun. After this adoption of a recognizably Jain mendicant
body, the ideology of renunciation is reestablished and fully realized.45
In sum, the similarities between the satı̄ procession and the Jain ordina-
tion parade for a nun are: (1) the woman, having taken her last bath, is dressed
in bridal clothing, decorated with henna, with her hair loose for her procession;
(2) the woman marks the threshold with kunku _ m as she leaves her house,
_
vowing never to return; (3) the woman is processed in front of the public, who
venerate her; (4) the woman is offered coconuts and other objects, which are
handed to her by enthusiastic onlookers and which she returns as blessed
objects; (5) the woman makes a gift of her personal jewelry to particular
individuals as a kind of blessed object; (6) these blessed objects and jewelry
are then preserved as a locus of the particular and powerful blessing of a
woman at the moment that marks her last opportunity to gift; and (7) her
completion of the ritual marks her as (socially) dead, but extremely auspicious.
The markers of auspiciousness (bridal clothing, henna, the use of a band,
offerings of coconuts and other auspicious objects, and the granting of
blessings) in both rituals configure the rites as auspicious, and not funerary.
What is relevant here is not whether these rituals intentionally partake of these
shared discourses but that the construction of a Jain woman’s renunciation is
modeled on the visual discourse of a particular kind of virtuous woman: a
satı̄mātā. Elsewhere I have argued that Jains draw on satı̄ discourse when there
seems to be a disjuncture between Jain liberation ideologies and the experi-
ences of women (Kelting 2003b). The contemporary rites of Jain ordination of
nuns bear the stamp of satı̄mātā imagery, but is this incorporation of satı̄
discourse a modern interpolation? Since Rājul is the model from which the
ordination of nuns is drawn, it proves illuminating to look at the development
of the Rājul story in the medieval period.
Satı̄ Discourse in Medieval and Modern Jain Rājul Narratives
Returning to Vinayacandrasūri’s Rājal Bārahmāsā, we find the story of Rājul

being framed within satı̄ discourse in which disgust for the world—the nor-
mative reason given for renunciation—is replaced by Rājul’s passionate attach-
ment to her husband. The text recounts the year-long suffering of the rejected
Rājul and her resolve to follow Nemi. In Rājal Bārahmāsa, Rajul defends
Nemi’s fidelity to her and, in doing so, sets the stage for seeing her as a satı̄vratā
(a woman who has vowed to die as a satı̄), saying: “If Nemi were to break his
promise, I shall end my life and my youth by offering myself to the flames of
fire” (Neminath, 20).46 Though not explicitly describing the rite of dying with
one’s husband, the image of offering oneself to the flames out of devotion to
one’s husband invokes a satı̄ death (even if one more like the goddess Satı̄).
It includes a clear parallelism between Rājul’s renunciation and the death of
a satı̄ that is echoed later in the poem. The key verse here from Vaudeville’s
translation reads as follows.
For eight lives I enjoyed my husband’s company,

O my friend, now my soul no longer craves pleasure:
Now I want to live and die by the side of my spouse—

in this life as in the others, in him alone I seek refuge.
Vaudeville 1986, 10447
The love of eight lives is a standard trope for undying devotion in Indian
love lyric and often resolves in the ninth and final life together. Thus, the
invocation of their past eight lives by Rājul highlights the particular pain
of being abandoned in this life and proves the urgency of Rājul reuniting
with Nemi.48 She wants to “die by the side of ” her spouse, much as a Hindu
satı̄ does. Rājul’s speech portrays renunciation as a path to dying with her
spouse, disrupting the moksa-mārg understanding of renunciation as a rejec-
˙
tion of worldly ties and attachments. In addition, renunciation is never cast as
death in the Jain tradition; thus her desire to die with her spouse clearly evokes
satı̄ discourse.
Śubhavijay’s Rājı̄matı̄nā Bār Māsānı̄ Sajjhāy from the turn of the sixteenth
to seventeenth centuries uses the tropes of the reunited bodies of the husband
and the satı̄.49 At the year’s end, when Rājul finally resolves to renounce, her
ordination and death are rendered as follows.
By her Lord’s hand, Rājul took ordination. . . .

She will be with her beloved forever, the divided became mixed
again.50
Jain Sajjhāymālā 1986/1987, 124
_
Rājul’s ordination suggests the continuity of her love rather than the renuncia-
tion of it. Śubhavijay take this eternality a step closer to satı̄ imagery: “the
divided became mixed again” evokes both the ideal of the shared single body of
husband and wife and the image of the comingled ashes of the satı̄ and her
husband, which are associated with Rājul.
Devcand’s nineteenth-century Nemanāthno Saloko links the lots of Nemi
and Rājul in the end with their simultaneous deaths, which posits their unity
in liberation.51
Ordination taken and then the funeral performed,

Quickly each received omniscience.52
Rājul’s ordination and death are tightly compressed here, allowing her to be
bound with Nemi, “quickly”—the urgency reflecting the satı̄’s need to be
reunited with her husband and the ritual compression of the time between a
husband’s death and her own.
Between Marriage and Renunciation
Rājul is neither daughter, nor wife, nor widow and, at the moment of her
renunciation, she is not yet nun either.53 This multivalence is central to Rājul’s
availability for the integration of satı̄ discourse, as Hindu satı̄s too stand on the
threshold between identities. This liminality surfaces in the ambiguity around
the imagery of clothing. Though Hindu satı̄s predominantly invoke auspicious
wifehood by wearing the signs of wifehood and by their obvious links to their
husbands, a counterdiscourse in images of satı̄ as renouncer bears some
examination. Some Hindu satı̄s are processed dressed like ascetics wearing
saffron clothes and no jewelry, while most dress as a bride (Harlan 1992, 151).
Saffron invokes the image of the Hindu renouncer, and thus the wearing
of saffron may link satı̄ identity to that of a renouncer. These satı̄s’ use of
saffron mirrors the donning of saffron by Rajput heroes who go to battle
knowing they will die (Harlan 1996, 240). In both cases, the saffron can be a
mark that the person (satı̄ or hero) is knowingly separating from his or her
social context and renouncing life. In one satı̄ song (Harlan 1995b, 270, 272),
the satı̄ is described as wearing a saffron sari over red blouse and petticoat, a
combination that mingles her identity as renouncer and bride. In another satı̄
song, the satı̄mātā leaves footprints in both saffron and kunku _ m, which show
_
her identity as both renouncer and auspicious bride (Harlan 2003, 212).
One Hindu satı̄, Kālal De Satı̄, followed her husband into “living samādhi”
_
in which they were both interred while alive in a rite which fuses the discourse
of renunciation evoked by the ritual of “living samādhi” with that of the satı̄
who dies with her husband. In a devotional lithograph, Kālal De Satı̄ is shown
_
dressed in a wedding sari over what appears to be a saffron blouse and skirt.
She is wearing bridal jewelry, but carrying the water pot of a renouncer
(Weinberger-Thomas 2000, 168). Kālal De Satı̄, like many satı̄s, evokes these
_
two identities simultaneously. Weinberger-Thomas further argues that living
satı̄mātās are sometimes identified with renouncers, and she notes their
exclusion from the funerary practices of feeding ancestors (Weinberger-Thom-
as 2000, 82–83). In this we can see how Hindu satı̄s, similar to the Jain satı̄
Rājul, stand at the threshold of renunciation and wifehood. Hindu satı̄mātās
resolve this through their death as a satı̄, while Rājul does so through renunci-
ation.
Rājul’s renunciation bridges the notion of renunciation as social death and
the satı̄mātā in ways similar to the living satı̄mātā whose asceticism in her life
as a satı̄ marks her as miraculous. In some cases, the Hindu satı̄mātās do not
actually die, but they prove their intention to do so (Courtright 1995, 190–203;
Harlan 1992, 172–179; Weinberger-Thomas 2000, 145–151). In these cases, the
satı̄ is prevented from achieving her goal of death, but is still full of the sat
(virtue/power) which satı̄s display. These living satı̄mātās then reconfigure
themselves as renouncers living ascetically and conforming to the restricted
behavior of widows, but in miraculous or heroic ways. For example, Bālā
Satı̄mātā is said to have not eaten for nearly forty years (Bālā Satı̄ Mātā Lı̄lāmrt
_
1995, 45–64). The primary difference between living satı̄mātās and ascetic
widows is the ultimate auspiciousness of the satı̄mātās garnered from their
intention and the power that inheres in their choice to die. Before and after
their deaths, living satı̄mātās have the capacity to bless their devotees. Living
satı̄mātās in the Hindu tradition provide insight into how Jains can attribute
this kind of power and devotion to Rājul and also allow her to demonstrate her
heroic devotion to Nemi without compromising her Jainness.54 In this way,
Rājul comes to be known as the model for Jain nun’s ordinations.
Central to Rājul’s story, the threshold resonates with stories of Hindu
satı̄mātās who likewise cross the thresholds of their homes to follow their
husbands’ corpses. In her work on European representations of satı̄, Major
(2006) argues that the shifting ways in which satı̄s were iconized in European
accounts are linked to shifts in the discourse on women in Europe. Likewise,
the shifts in Rājul’s accounts may reflect Jain engagements with changing
understandings about women more generally in South Asia. What at first
appears to be a contradiction between two discourses in a Jain context—
renunciation and pativratā—when contextualized within Hindu satı̄mātā im-
agery becomes a third category—unnamed, but identified with Rājul—which
bridges the seeming gap by integrating both categories into the perfect re-
nouncing pativratā.
Visualizing Rājul
The visual representations of Rājul’s renunciation draw on satı̄ discourse far

more than on the ideology of renunciation.55 For example, the painting in
Junnar, Maharashtra, that first inspired this discussion, pictures Rājul dressed
in wedding finery, but with her face uncovered and arm extended, following
Nemi to their ordinations. Her appearance and the structure of the painting
invoke the funeral procession of a man and a satı̄ (figure 5.2). Other images of
Rājul in temples, books, cassette cases, and ritual drama performances have
her dressed in wedding clothes, with long flowing hair. She is never shown
with the “plucked tresses” of Rājul’s procession in the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra or

the bald but covered head of an ordained nun. Usually she is shown in a
passionate posture, rushing after Nemi, arms outstretched. She does not in any
way evoke the sentiments of peace that should mark an ordination. Nor does
she represent a bride, who would either be confined to the house or covered by
a veil, with her hair tightly controlled. Her pursuit of Nemi would be unseemly
in any context other than satı̄ discourse.
If the temple painting and printed images of Rājul’s ordination suggest a
satı̄ following her husband, the sculptural image of Rājul at the Lūna Vasahı̄
_
temple in Mount Abu and that image’s worship represent her as a fully realized
satı̄mātā or goddess (figure 5.4). Though Rājul is an enlightened soul (siddha),
she is carved in the form of a woman with her right arm bent and her hand
raised, rather than the generic male form used for other enlightened beings;
the other enlightened beings who are not Jinas are usually represented in
forms that are reminiscent of the Jinas’ forms. Satı̄ stones often represent a
single hand (often marked with vermilion) on a bent arm with bangles repre-
senting her married state. Further, Rājul is sculpted as a goddess with clothing,
long hair, and jewelry, rather than as a renouncer.56 In 2001, I found the Mount
Abu Rājul covered with a red sparkling veil (cundadı̄ ); the same kind of veil
_
adorning the goddess Ambikā, whose image is nearby in the same room.
When siddhas (like Gautam Swāmı̄, for example) are dressed, they are dressed
in the silver covers that are also used on the Jinas. When these other siddhas
are worshiped, they receive the same pattern of sandalwood paste marks on
their nine limbs as the Jinas do. In contrast, Rājul was worshiped in ways more
like a guardian goddess than an enlightened being. She received a sandalwood
mark on her forehead and another on the big toe of her right foot. The
sandalwood forehead mark is given to the guardian deities, and the mark on
her right big toe links her to Jain fertility practices associated with the guardian
goddesses (Kelting 2001b, 121). The manner in which Rājul was worshiped in
the temple at the Abu complex indicates her shift from siddha to goddess in the
ritual culture, mirroring the use of the veil songs in the last section of this
chapter. When this shift took place is open to question, but it is clear that
worship to Rājul images has been taking place since at least as early as the
fourteenth century.57
This visual interpretation of Rājul as a goddess is further reinforced by her
invocation in texts and hymns on behalf of marital happiness. The story of
Nemi and Rājul is also claimed to have the power to bring marital happiness.
In particular, the annual recitation of Devcand’s Nemanāthno Saloko is widely
believed to bless a marriage.58 The text tells us that by performing or listening
to this text being performed, one can have the happiness and liberation in unity
figure 5.4. Rājul image decorated with a sparkling veil. Lūna Vasahı̄ Temple,
˙
Mt. Abu, 2001.
that Nemi and Rājul did; it further promises men that it will get them a bride
like Rājul. This recitation is also linked to the performance of two fasts, the
Pañcamı̄ fast on Śrāvan bright fifth and the Saubhāgya Pañcamı̄ fast (a five-
_
years and five-months line of fasts on the bright fifth of each month), which are
both said to protect a woman’s status as an auspicious wife; all three center
around listening to this text’s recitation.59 The efficacy of Nemanāthno Saloko
arises from one’s meditation on Rājul, whose efficacy resembles that of a
lineage goddess or satı̄mātā who blesses marriages, much more than it does
a siddha.60
Rājul and Veil Songs
I have made the point elsewhere (Kelting 2001b) that hymns prove a rich
ground for women’s devotionalism to flourish in Jainism. One might expect to
find a certain number of hymns about Rājul. In fact, there is an entire genre of
hymns dedicated to Rajul: cundadı̄ gı̄t or veil songs.61 In Jain contexts, these veil
_
songs were mostly performed at bhāvanās, which are singing sessions com-
monly held in the Jain temples in the late evening.62 Among Jains, veil songs
were performed at celebrations associated with fasts, ordinations, familial
celebrations, and pilgrimages. This particular genre also appears in Gujarati
Hindu contexts, in which they are dedicated to lineage goddesses or to particu-
lar goddesses at Navrātri—the nine nights of the goddess (Navarātrinı̄ Ramjhat
_
2002).63 Likewise, these songs bear a strong resemblance to satı̄mātā songs
sung in Rajput Hindu night singing sessions (rātijagā or rātri jagran) per-
formed to mark familial celebrations, including rites of passage. The night
singing sessions (rātijagā) of Rajput women include songs for heroes (vı̄r and
jhuñjhār), lineage goddesses (kuldevı̄s), familial ancestors (pitr, pitrānı̄, and
purvaj) and satı̄mātās (Harlan 1992, 47). This parallels the Jain bhāvanās,
whose songs celebrate the Jinas (the quintessential heroes for Jains), guardian
goddesses, protector gods (bheru, bhūmiya, ksetrapāl, and vı̄r), and satı̄s.
˙
A brief look at satı̄mātā songs illustrates the connection between these
songs and the veil songs sung by Jains. Common to many songs and prayers of
invocation, the Hindu satı̄mātā is described in ways that make a body (or an
image) serve as the imaginative object to be worshiped. One satı̄mātā song
(translated by Harlan) invokes the satı̄mātā for worship by visualizing her.
Why are there saffron footprints in my courtyard?

Why are there turmeric footprints in my courtyard?
_ [kunku
Why are there kankū _ m] footprints in my courtyard?
_
Why are there menhdı̄ [henna] footprints in my courtyard?

_
Come sit on this throne, Mother
Sit on this platform (bājot)
_
With your loose hair, O Mother,
On your forehead a line of saffron,
On your eyes a line of lamp black,
Your teeth are decorated with gold.
Your lips are reddened with pān [betel].
On your hands menhdi.
_
On your feet, pungent perfume.
You are covered with a deep red sari,
and the bells on your ankle bracelets are jingling.
In this degenerate age [Kaliyuga], O Satı̄mātā, come and be my
guest.
Harlan 1995b, 273
This satı̄ song provides us with a description of how a satı̄mātā looks in her
powerful and efficacious form. With the exception of her loose hair, this
satı̄mātā looks like a bride. Her loose hair is understood to demonstrate her
transcendence and her nature as a goddess (Harlan 2003, 212). The attention
to her ornaments and in particular to markers of her auspicious wifehood
remind us that this song is dedicated to a satı̄mātā, without explicitly describ-
ing her death.
In other satı̄mātā songs, the veil is the primary signifier of the satı̄mātā’s
auspiciousness. In a collection of Rajasthani folksongs, we find a satı̄mātā
song, “Satı̄ Rānı̄” (or “Rānal Satı̄”), which uses the imagery of the brand new
_ _ _
bride who becomes a satı̄mātā when her veil is still new. I include two verses
below.
Satı̄ mātā, your veil (cūnarı̄ ), Queen, was just dyed on Tuesday.
You lifted it just once, Queen, then it was taken away by your
sisters.
Satı̄ mātā, your ivory armbands, Queen, they look beautiful as you
go to the pyre.
You wore them well, Queen, you wore them when you went with
your beloved.
_ 1938, 21
Rāmasinh
In most Hindu satı̄mātā songs the verses list each of the ornaments—her
śrngār (signs of auspicious wifehood)—that the satı̄ puts on when she is
_
preparing herself to die. These ornaments remind the worshipers that the satı̄
remains an auspicious wife, and they stand in for her intention to die as a satı̄.
The sixteen ornaments are also central to representations of Rājul; several
of the veil songs (cundadı̄s) move through describing each ornament as a
_
metonymy for Rājul. The most commonly named of the sixteen ornaments
in the Jain veil songs—henna, bangles, ivory armbands, and the wedding
veil—are the signs most strongly linked to weddings and to satı̄mātās.64
Henna is both decorative and auspicious and is worn in contexts that evoke
both aspects of the presence of wives: wives as the object of their husbands’
desire and wives as auspicious. In common speech, henna signified the period
of time in which one is a bride (rather than the more pedestrian wife) and was
most strongly linked to weddings and their attending rites and blessings.
Henna is cooling to the body (both spiritually and literally) and is known to
“cool off” the bride before the wedding, but dark henna from a “hot” body is
preferred on a bride (and a groom) so the wedding henna should not cool the
couple too much.65 Veil songs and other songs that mention Rājul often
mention her putting henna on her hands as part of the preparation for her
marriage and a marker of her soon-to-be rejected wifehood.
I decorate my hands with henna,

The color of my husband, O prince.
Listen to the jingling of my bangles,
My heart is dancing.
The servant of your feet awaits you, O my Nem!66
In this veil song Rājul links her henna and bangles to the excitement of getting
married and tells us of the passion that is building within her for her husband,
a passion that leads her to reject the happiness of marriage in general and
choose instead to renounce with Nemi.
Bangles and ivory armbands carry an even stronger denotation of wife-
hood. In a popular veil song, putting on bangles serves metonymically for
getting married.
Green, green is the color of Rājul’s veil,

She gave her heart to her in-laws, Rājul’s veil!
Night after night, Rājul’s wedding bangles,
He is eager to put on her wedding bangles, Rājul’s veil.
Upāsanā 2000, 173
Contemporary Jain wedding ceremonies include putting bangles on a daugh-

ter (and sometimes all her married female relatives) before the wedding and
putting bangles on a daughter-in-law, marking her as part of her affinal family.

In this community, glass bangles are especially associated both with auspicious
married women and at the same time with goddess worship. In the sign of the
glass bangle, we find an overlap between the auspiciousness of married
women and the power and blessing of goddesses.67 At the start of a wedding,
families worship their lineage goddess. In my observation, this rite is some-
times accompanied by a vow that all those who perform the worship will wear
glass bangles. When this is so, then the bangles themselves serve as a marker
of who is a potential participant in the goddess’s worship and who may be a
recipient of her blessing. Ivory armbands (like bangles, but in rural areas of
Rajasthan and Gujarat stretching up the arms of the woman) are a marker of
auspicious wifehood, as well.68 When I was discussing wedding jewelry with
one Jain laywoman, she explained to me that were she to die before her
husband, she would be cremated wearing her ivory armbands and also her
wedding veil. Stevenson (1984, 203) notes that in the early twentieth century if
a Gujarati Jain woman was widowed, her ivory armbands would be broken and
cremated with her husband’s body. While the gold bangles (kankan) represent
_
the wealth of women (strı̄dhan), the glass bangles and ivory armbands repre-
sent her auspiciousness.
The most repeated image found in all of these songs is that of Rājul’s veil
(cundadı̄, and also, commonly, cunarı̄).69 The most popular of all the veil songs
_
is “Lift Rājul’s Veil.” I heard it at nearly every singing session (bhāvanā)
I attended between 1993 and 2006, and it was performed by two women at a
contest in 2006 for the best singing of a song about Nemi and Rājul.70 This
song had a particularly arresting melody, and the images of the kinds of veils
Rājul is given evokes memories of the women’s own wedding veils.
Ah the knot is tied in the Jaipuri veil!

O the colourful one dyed in Bikaner!
Lift Rājul’s veil.
This one is the heavy veil sent from my father-in-law’s house,
O I will go as soon as the moon is full.
Ah Nem, Rājul’s veil,
This veil cost one and a quarter thousand.
O Nemji came to the door garland.
O he heard the animals crying.
O Nemji turned his chariot back.
O he went and climbed Mount Girnār.
O Nemji, strong and lovely!
O he [glows like] the color of turmeric!

O I am yours Nemināthji!
“Beloved!” Rājul cries a little for her soul-mate.
This song lists several veils with ritual significances that Jain laywomen were
quick to explain to me. The first, the Jaipuri veil, is the veil she wears at the
wedding itself, where it is knotted with the groom’s cloth. The expense of her
wedding veil marks her marital family’s status (and by extension her own, for
being accepted by such a fine family). One woman told me that the veil from
Bikaner would be a gift from her husband, as Bikaner veils are known to be
sheer and therefore sexy. The heavy veil is gifted from her in-laws and symbo-
lizes the burden (however welcomed) of expectations (especially purdah) in her
husband’s house.
The bridal veil is worn during key rituals of the wedding ceremony and
after the wedding at moments that mark a woman as auspicious. In the
worship of the lineage goddess that starts a Jain wedding, the soon-to-be bride’s
veil is draped on each auspicious married woman who participates in blessing
the groom and becomes the focal object of that goddess’s blessing and protec-
tion.71 The bridal veil is then presented to the bride as part of the gifts from her
husband’s family to her that mark the start of the wedding and her transition to
her new family. The bride wears the wedding veil throughout the rites of the
wedding and especially when worshiping her natal and affinal lineage god-
desses, and when she enters her marital home for the first time. A married
woman will keep her bridal veil for her whole life. She will wear it again on the
wedding days of her children. The veil becomes the link between the woman
and family protector goddesses. If a married woman dies before her husband,
she will be cremated wearing the veil. If her husband dies first, she may not
wear the veil again. As part of the funerary rites of a Rajput woman who dies
before her husband, there is a rite called the cunarı̄ rasam during which the
deceased woman’s wedding veil is cremated on the twelfth day after her death
(Oldenburg 1994b, 121). Likewise, part of the transformation of a Hindu satı̄
into a satı̄mātā is the ritual cremation of her veil (cundadı̄), which is removed
_
before her cremation for this purpose, or another wedding veil—if the first
was burned—on the twelfth day after her death with her husband (Hawley
1994, 25 n. 10).
After the death of Roop Kanvar in 1987, the understanding of this satı̄ rite
changed. Her cunarı̄ rasam was styled the Cunarı̄ Mahotsav (Great Veil Festi-
val) in which, on the thirteenth day after the satı̄’s death, a wedding veil was
draped over the trident that had been erected on the site of her death to
represent her and to serve as an object of worship. This new rite was attended
by hundreds of thousands of onlookers (Hawley 1994, 4). In response to this

shift and the overall national outrage over Roop Kanvar’s death, satı̄ veneration
was outlawed in India with the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Bill, 1987 (Bill
133), which expanded on the laws outlawing the practice of satı̄ with particular
attention to the criminalization of satı̄ glorification and propagation. The
Indian High Court responded to the antisatı̄ veneration law by defining the
symbols of satı̄ worship as the waterpot, the veil (cundadı̄), and the fifty-six food
_
offerings (Hardgrove 2004, 251). Both before and after the 1987 legislation, in
Hindu satı̄mātā worship, women offer their wedding veils to a satı̄mātā
in order to gain the satı̄mātā’s protection for her auspicious wifehood and
marital happiness (Hardgrove 2004, 254 and 267). The blessing of wedding
veils is a critical reason for Marwari pilgrimage to Rānı̄ Satı̄’s temple
_
(Hardgrove 2004, 272). Thus satı̄mātā images are often covered in wedding
veils similar to those covering the image of Rājul at Mount Abu. These rituals
highlight the significance of the veil as the sign of the satı̄mātā and the ways in
which the wedding veil stands in for the auspicious bride.
Harlan translates another Hindu satı̄ song that invokes the image of the
auspicious wife while reminding us of her dead husband whose body lies
below in the courtyard.
Satı̄mātā, take a forehead ornament and wear it.

O take a forehead ornament and wear it.
Why the delay for the forehead ornament [hurry up!], Satı̄mātā?
Your husband’s litter is waiting under the balcony.
Your young man’s litter is waiting under the balcony.
Waiting under the balcony, waiting under the balcony.
Harlan 1995b, 272
The song then continues to substitute the signs of auspicious wifehood (earr-
ings, nose ring, forehead mark, necklace, bangles, saffron sari, and toe rings)
from the top of the body to the bottom (Harlan 1995b, 272). The choices of the
signs themselves may vary by family and the length of song desired, but in all
cases focus on the representation of the satı̄ as an auspicious wife and not a
widow. The signs of the satı̄mātā and those of wifehood necessarily overlap,
because the importance of the satı̄mātā’s status of auspicious wifehood is
central to the logic of the rite of dying with one’s husband. Jains share the
attribution of the power of auspicious wifehood signified by henna, glass
bangles, ivory arm bands, and wedding veils. Thus it is unsurprising that
when singing of Rājul, who stands before them as a satı̄, that they too invoke
the signs that mark Rājul as auspicious rather than inauspicious, as satı̄ rather
than abandoned wife.
In most popular veil songs, Rājul dresses herself in her wedding orna-
ments in anticipation of Nemi’s arrival and their marriage. However, in one
popular veil song, Rājul starts out weeping, because Nemi has left her. (We
know he has left because she is calling him by his Jina name, Nemināth, rather
than just Nem or Nemi.) But abruptly her weeping changes to joy, followed
immediately by her decorating her hands with henna. It is significant to my
_
argument that Rājul stops weeping and then dresses in her śrngār happily, just
_
as a satı̄ ceases her mourning and decorates her hands with henna as soon as
she has resolved to die with her husband. Rājul’s initial sorrow at Nemi’s
departure is replaced by joy at her resolve to follow him, and it is after this
decision that she dresses herself as an auspicious bride.
Come, come, my Nemināth, O worldly husband!

A woman was weeping,
Sitting in the palace, wasting away,
My heart dances today,
I decorate my hands with henna, . . .
I cover myself in bangles,
I wear my sixteen ornaments,
The auspicious shenai is playing, . . .
I heard the animals crying,
Don’t turn your chariot back, Lord!
O my husband of eight births,
I will go with you to Girnār,
Thus went Rājul and her Lord, O worldly husband!
Svar Sangı̄t Gı̄tamālā, 86
Rājul puts on her wedding jewelry and follows Nemi to Girnār to renounce.
This song compresses the time of her wedding, her abandonment, and her
resolve to follow Nemi into a single act, reminding the listener of the compres-
sion of time in satı̄ rituals. But most important, this veil song suggests that
following Nemi redeems Rājul from inauspiciousness and ultimately makes
her a satı̄.
Finally, in addition to those veil songs which adopt the form of the satı̄mātā
song, listing her auspicious ornaments (śrngār), there are some that use
_
satı̄mātā imagery to explicitly articulate Rājul as a satı̄mātā. In Hindu satı̄
narratives a key determiner of the authenticity of a satı̄ is that through the
power of her sat alone she self-combusts, lighting their pyre. The veil song,
“The Groom Turns from the Door-garland” uses the images of Rājul’s internal
flames, clearly linking her to the satı̄mātās.72 The song’s popularity indicates
the power of this image for the Jain women who choose to sing it.73
Her body’s connection with him was broken by that virtuous

act [by Nemi’s renunciation],
Her soul had fallen in love with his soul.
From within that flame, a flame is lit,74
From sister Rājul’s door-garland.
Go! Well-done! my beloved of life after life.

I obtained a new life at your feet.
Inside I am alight,75
Sister Rājul’s door-garland.
This last veil song uses a trope of satı̄ discourse in which the satı̄ is set afire by
the power of her inner flame.76 The image of Rājul being set alight from within
herself alerts the listener to the “sat” arising—which is often expressed in
Hindu satı̄s as the flame or jyot within—in Rājul as she stands at the threshold
about to leave to follow Nemi. Rājul is a perfected satı̄mātā whose self-induced
immolation drives her to renunciation in order to remain with Nemi, her
beloved of many lives.
Jains reject the overt discourse of satı̄mātās because of their connection to
an act of violence and suicide, and because of the implicit passion required to
perform these acts. Jain laywomen and nuns were careful to ensure that I knew
that none of the Jain satı̄s had immolated themselves with their husbands.77
One nun interrupted her telling of the story of a Jain satı̄ Damayantı̄—who
likewise followed her husband into ordination—to explain to me: “None of the
Jain satı̄s kill themselves with their husbands, like Hindu satı̄s do. That’s sin
(pāp).”78 Before continuing her narration, she insisted that I write down exactly
what she said. Her emphasis on the death suggests that it is the “not dying”
which is the significant difference between the Jain satı̄ and the Hindu one.
The concern with the Jain moral virtue of Jain satı̄s in some senses ratifies the
power of Hindu satı̄mātā discourse among Jains. But this integration happens
in the medieval Jain literature written by scholar-monks as the source of the
images found in popular devotional hymns to Rājul.
Although other Jain satı̄s took ordination along with their husbands at the
end of their story—a coda that often compressed their ordination, death,
rebirth or liberation into a single sentence—of the satı̄s who follow their
husband, Rājul is the one who captured the Jain writers’ and Jain laywomen’s
imaginations. The many songs, stories, and images associated with Rājul
suggest that the power of the satı̄ to inspire women to rededicate themselves
to their religious obligations and values continues in Jain contexts. Satı̄
discourse reconciles the paradoxical ideologies of devoted wifehood and
renunciation by giving Jain women the figure of Rājul. Rājul both acts as a
devoted wife and upholds the Jain ideal of renunciation, while at the same time
providing protection for a women’s marital happiness; the power of one’s
position as an auspicious wife is supported, in part, through its association
with a woman who was never fully a wife. She is a pativratā without peer, so
much so that the imagery, functionality, and narrative turns of a Hindu
satı̄mātā are written onto her, in spite of powerful Jain proscriptions against
the practice of dying with one’s husband. And yet she is simultaneously the
premier model of Jain women’s renunciation. How can she be both? By Rājul’s
unwavering devotion to her husband, which leads her to renounce in order to
stay with him, and ultimately leads to her enlightenment and liberation.79
Rājul embodies the contradictions inherent at any juncture between house-
holder/wife and renouncer. She is bride/not bride, widow/not widow, sati-
mātā/not satı̄mātā, echoing the interstitial position of the Hindu satı̄mātā,
who herself is bride/un-widow/dedicated wife/renouncer/goddess/family pro-
tector. Perhaps that integration of pativratā and renouncer serves as a model
not only for idealized Jain virtue but also for life as a Jain wife.
6
Embodying Wifehood
In the previous chapters, the focus of the discussion has been on

how Jain wives negotiate the ideologies of pativratā within the
contours of Jainism. In chapter 5 we see the tensions between
pativratā discourse and the Jain ideology of renunciation. In these
earlier chapters, satı̄ stories and rituals performed by Jain wives are
analyzed to examine themes of agency, marital happiness, and the
powers of Jain satı̄s. In this chapter, the discussion will turn toward
young unmarried Jain women, in order to illuminate the ways that
Jain satı̄ narratives and their accompanying rituals are reconfigured
to accommodate these young women’s reconstitution of themselves
as wives through the embodiment of Jain satı̄s. This process of
“becoming” is manifest through the acts and gestures of these
unmarried women as they explore their possible futures.
Young Jain women spoke to me of renunciation as a choice to
consider alongside marriage. Although it is important to note that
there are some communities and families that produce Jain nuns and
some that seem not to produce them, the power of renunciation as an
imaginary is clear from my many conversations with young Jain
women. The question of the viability of this option is a matter of
degree. Historically, Pune and its surrounding district have not been a
very active location for the recruitment of Jain monks or nuns, though
recently some Jain mendicant lineages are actively attempting to
recruit from the region.1 In addition, many of the women with whom
I spoke could name monks or nuns who came from their families;
these women often named relatives from their maternal line or their mother’s
maternal line living in locations where renunciation is more common. For
these women, it is clear that renunciation is a real possibility, even if it remains
an unlikely one. For those young women whose families did not have a history
of renunciation, the question of the viability of renunciation as a choice is more
complicated. On one hand, the very presence of mendicants provides the
possibility of imagining oneself as a nun. It is in the imagination of nunhood
and the ritual explorations of that possibility that young Jain women are able to
see marriage likewise as a choice. For these women, the choice may remain an
abstract choice: something to consider. But, these young women’s explorations
of renunciation—whether on the level of a real possibility or a more abstract
“something to consider”—are still both real explorations of identities. The
discursive nature of each of these roles does not prevent young women from
selectively performing them in ways that create space for their own selfhood
(Barvosa-Carter 2005, 176–180). On another level, this imagining of the self as
nun and/or wife fuels the development of selfhood—a self that has choices—
among young Jain women, while at the same time the imaginings and actions
of their families inscribe the personhood of wife on the same young woman.2
In renunciation, Jainism provides women the real possibility of a respect-
able life path other than marriage.3 Young Jain women know that they will be
leaving their childhood home regardless of their choice.4 Women can choose to
renounce in this tradition, and according to a 1996 survey in the Tapā Gacch
there are 4,290 nuns and 1,278 monks—a ratio of just over 3.35:1 (Flügel 2006,
323). In my observation and that of other scholars of Jainism, Jain women were
aware of this choice from a young age, and married women spoke to me quite
openly about the extent to which they considered becoming nuns before
marriage. For unmarried women, speaking of becoming a nun would imply
the intent to renounce and, in certain contexts, could be an irrevocable inten-
tion. Even if the young woman did not speak of this as an intention, showing
too much focus on nunhood could damage marriage prospects, while speaking
openly of a desire to marry again transgresses sexual modesty. Instead, these
explorations are marked by performances and ritual embodiments. Indeed,
this seems to be an age at which performative explorations of the identities of
wife and nun are quite popular among young women. In this chapter, I analyze
contexts—events, rituals, stories—in which women, principally unmarried
young women, embody aspects of wifehood and nunhood through perfor-
mances. Though Jain women usually accommodate gender expectations by
ultimately marrying husbands chosen by their parents, they do so informed by
their engagement with constituting their own bodies as wifely bodies, a process
made complicated by the experiments in embodying nunhood. When women
EMBODYING WIFEHOOD 143
choose wifehood, they do so by rejecting nunhood; thus, even in choosing a

conventional path they create ruptures within the powerful ideological dis-
courses that work to discipline Jain women’s bodies.
Although the many ritual practices (fasting, dietary restrictions, daily con-
fession, daily meditation, and study) of nuns and laywomen can be seen on a
continuum (Kelting 2001b, 22; Laidlaw 1995, 240–241; Vallely 2002, 217–218,
222–231), the ideology of renunciation as manifest in the self-representations of
nuns suggests a rupture in the continuum between worldliness and world-
transcendence (Vallely 2002, 97).5 Vallely (2002, 109; 2006, 237–238) describes
the importance among Jain nuns of having a proper view of one’s history—one
that focuses on worldly detachment—as a form of “learning to remember.” The
narratives of a nun’s choice to renounce and her ordination are shaped by the
ideology of renunciation, inevitably obscuring any socioeconomic reasons that
contributed to that choice. Similarly, married women’s narratives about their own
wedding arrangements and marriages are shaped by expected conformity to the
ideologies of wifehood. In their repeated tellings, both kinds of narratives are
disciplined into their ideological forms. It is for this reason that the incipient
moment in which young women explore these choices can be a fruitful site for
thinking about the ways these competing ideologies inscribe young women’s
bodies and the process of becoming that these young women embody.
Thinking about Jain uses of embodiment and performativity, this chapter
analyzes the ways in which young women perform their bodies at a time when
the ideologies of wifehood are being most overtly inscribed on them. The
discourse on wives and nuns enacted in ritual embodiments sets a woman’s
virtue on a continuum onto which young women can creatively project them-
selves. As young women embody satı̄s ritually, their own bodies can invoke
contrary identities. For example, in the ritual fast breaking associated with the
Candanbālā fast, young women invoke both nunhood and wifehood through a
complex choreography of dress, gesture, performance, and display (Kelting
2006a; 2009a). This performativity provides ways for women to constitute
themselves before and after marriage, a multivalence that allows their acts to
be read simultaneously as liberation-directed and as well-being-directed.6 This
border crossing is not without its perils, as the young women performing it
might be seen as too religious or not religious enough, too self-directed, or too
world-directed. However, judging by their enthusiasm for these performances,
they must present a way for young women to garner some control over how their
bodies project these possible futures, and how their futures are to be read by the
community of adults who will in all likelihood decide them.
This chapter will describe the discursive practices in which unmarried Jain
women embody the ideological ideals of the bride, the wife, and the nun. The
embodied experiences to be discussed are those wifely practices which sur-

round the preparations of a young woman for marriage, those nunlike prac-
tices a young woman may choose to adopt in the context of vows, and those
more complex choreographies in which young women embody identities that
stand at the threshold which leads to either wifehood or nunhood.
Inscribing Wifehood
For young women who reach marriageable age, subtle shifts in expectations for
their behavior begun after the onset of puberty gel into more intentional
inscription of wifely bodies. Young women learn to perform wifely labor,
discipline their bodies for wifely modesty practices and clothing; they are
displayed as potential wives and have their bodies inscribed by their natal
and affinal families as wives. As marriageability draws closer, young women
are encouraged to adopt more of the practices associated with wives; they learn
how to do important household activities (most notably cooking), to perform
the rituals associated with wives, and to carry themselves with modesty.7 The
young woman must learn how to serve meals, how to shop for vegetables and
fruits, how to properly iron a sari, and the heavier labor of washing dishes and
laundry. Household duties are light for most young unmarried women, though
some carry a share of the unskilled, heavy work of sweeping, laundry, and
setting out beds, at least until there are sufficient daughters-in-law to perform
these daily tasks. Added to these skills are skills a young woman must learn in
order to demonstrate wifely competence while being evaluated by the families
of potential grooms. For instance, the young woman must learn how to serve
tea and snacks to guests, because this will usually be her first interaction with
potential in-laws. Though a simple act, the gracefulness of her gestures, the
attention to the timings of the offerings and removal of used dishes, and the
modest confidence with which the act is done are all evaluated by the potential
in-laws and reviewed by a young woman’s own family afterward. Even among
families that claimed their daughters never worked, marriageability was deter-
mined in part by a young woman’s having attained at least a minimum level of
competence in household skills.
In the first year of her marriage, a bride’s facility with these kinds of labor
decrease her work stress while she learns the particulars of how her marital
home is run. Puri (1999, 151–152) found in her interviews with upper- and
middle-class women that those who were not trained in housekeeping skills or
who were unaccustomed to doing any housework before marriage found the
labor and learning curve of the first years of marriage to be very difficult and
were often unhappy during that time. I spoke with many mothers with
marriage-aged daughters about how much work the daughter needs to do in
order to be ready for marriage. The mothers were divided into two groups. One
group argued that young women who work hard before they are married have
all the basic skills they need and have an easier time adjusting to their new
home and the burdens of work expected of them as wives. Working hard, they
said, also teaches the daughters responsibility and keeps them too busy for
scandals. The other group argued that their daughters would soon be entering
a life of toil and should therefore be pampered before they go. This latter group
did usually instruct their daughters in some cooking and basic food serving but
not much more. This was as much a statement of class status (“our daughters
don’t work”) as an affectionate response to the work ahead.
A young woman’s body practices must also be disciplined for marriage.
After puberty young women are expected to observe menses restrictions, to
wear modest clothing (usually salwār kamı̄z), and to avoid interaction with
men outside of their family. These changes come about slowly and, with the
exception of being taught private body practices associated with menstruation
by their mothers, are learned mostly through imitation of mothers, aunts,
older sisters, sisters-in-law, and friends. These young women were gently
(and later not so gently) scolded for acts that appeared to be insufficiently
modest; the newly prohibited or restricted acts are sometimes ones that were
acceptable for them as girls: stopping to talk with friends in the street, convers-
ing with one’s brother’s friends in public, laughing and giggling in public,
standing or sitting with legs and arms spread away from the body, and wearing
dresses or other Western-style clothes. The process of learning these body
practices contracts a young woman’s use of space both figuratively and literally
as she learns to keep her body out of the way of contact with others.8
Additional changes in bearing are linked to learning how to wear a sari.
From early childhood, girls wear caniyā colı̄s (a skirt, shirt, and half-sari) for
_
religious functions and, at other times, dresses. At the onset of puberty, some
young women begin to wear caniyā colı̄s to family weddings and salwār kamı̄z
_
in daily life. These two outfits start to prepare a young woman for sari wearing
by acculturating her to the practice of wearing a veil (odhanı̄ ), even if they do
_
not wear this veil or use the veil specifically to indicate modesty in the same
way as married women do. Young women often expend a lot of energy
displaying and controlling this new veil as a statement of their incipient
adulthood and newly discovered beauty. When marriage age nears (brides are
usually between nineteen and twenty-five), virtually all young women will wear
caniyā colı̄ or saris for weddings. I was told by several parents that the shift to
_
wearing saris to weddings was a way to indicate that the daughter is ready to be
considered for marriage. Sari wearing involves a change in gait, bearing, and
gesture. The sari does not allow the long strides that skirts or salwār kamı̄z
permit, so a young woman in a sari will walk more slowly and carefully. Tarlo
(1996, 155) found that the young Gujarati women with whom she spoke were
likewise nervous about whether they could properly wear married women’s
clothing, and found their movements constrained. Until one is used to wearing
a sari, there is concern that it will untuck, leaving them exposed (a fear I heard
from many young women), and thus the young women stand relatively still
and straight without making quick movements, thus disciplining their bodies
to the more controlled body practices of wives.
A sari is, unless pinned in several places, a dynamic covering, which
women move strategically, accompanied by gesture and expression, to com-
municate with onlookers and to assert particular claims of status and virtue.
Sari wearing is accompanied by a set of gestures linked to modesty (Tarlo 1996,
160–166). Similarly, pro-veiling Muslim women in Egypt argue that the veiled
body simultaneously creates and represents the virtue of modesty (Mahmood
2005, 23). In this context, the veiling itself creates a modest subject. Sari
wearers have a number of characteristic gestures, often learned by imitation
of elder female relatives, that control the cloth. Modesty is marked by the extent
to which the sari covers the head of the woman, but sometimes also her arms
and midriff through careful adjustment of the loose edges. Young unmarried
women who wear saris at functions do not necessarily learn all of these
gestures of modesty, because they are not expected to cover their hair as
married women do. In addition, because their saris are usually pinned in
several places to calm the wearer’s concerns about untucking, and to keep
the sari well draped, the sari is not loose enough to perform many of these
gestures. It is only in the context of religious events that a young woman might
internalize how to maneuver a sari through the gestures of modesty. Though
most mothers told me that they made their daughter practice modesty gestures
only right before marriage, practice in sari wearing generally makes the
gestures of modesty less awkward for the new bride.
It is no surprise that most young women do not like wearing saris. The sari
signals the end of the relatively carefree period of childhood and the beginning
of both marriage arrangements and married life. When young women told me
they did not want to wear saris, their concerns centered around questions of
mobility and identity. One young woman I know said of saris that it was like
being tied up. Others said they felt uncomfortable in saris and could not move
naturally. Women who wear saris habitually have little trouble walking fast,
doing labor, and having a wide range of movements, but the restrictions of
movement for those learning to wear a sari seem to parallel the restrictions on
their body practices associated with modesty and their future wifehood. The
resistance to sari wearing cannot be solely attributed to discomfort in a new
body practice; the implications of these new body practices on a young woman’s
identity must also be considered. The sari also marks a shift in identity. Several
young women told me that saris were for middle-aged women and not for
modern young women.9 Unmarried young women do not wear saris except to
functions and to the temple, because sari wearing in this community is a
marker of married life. In her writing on veiling, Mahmood (2005, 54) sug-
gests that in order to successfully execute a skilled body practice (such as
veiling) a woman must internalize the self-reflective assessments that allow
her to judge her own performance of the practice. In a sense, when young Jain
women wear a sari, they are putting on the identity of a married woman in a
kind of trial run. To resist the sari is to deny the coming changes in identity. To
wear a sari is to embody wifehood and to constitute a wifely, sexual body, which
needs to be transferred to a groom and his family.
In the period during which young women are being evaluated as potential
wives, they are asked simultaneously to act like wives and to feel like girls.
Though young unmarried women tend to show some abstract interest in their
future marriage (and more often interest in their fiancé), until the engagement
is sealed it is considered unseemly and immodest to indicate much overt
interest. Young women are embodying themselves as wives, but restrictions
on modesty forbid them from publicly or verbally exploring the emotional and
sociopolitical lessons of wifehood. Young women did question older sisters and
married friends about married life, including sexuality. Their only other source
of information was to listen while married women discussed married life;
these discussions usually focused on problem solving. The joys of married
life were expected and therefore not noteworthy, and they were also not
considered quite appropriate to speak of with girls and young women who
were not yet engaged. Further, a happy marriage could be damaged by the evil
eye if spoken about too freely. Girls often left the room when these discussions
began (they reported them as dull), but as young women approached marriage-
able age, they were more apt to stay on the periphery, listening discretely. At the
same time, the very process of learning wifehood seems to make young women
more anxious; they often expressed reluctance to participate in the various
aspects of learning wifehood. The process of having one’s marriage arranged is
very stressful for both young men and young women, but for young women it
is accompanied by changes in body practice, in the amount and kinds of work
they are doing, and in the ways that they are expected to behave socially. Young
women’s bodies become a site of contestation and reconstitution, which
changes them from girls to wives.10
Young Jain women’s bodies are displayed in a handful of contexts: marriage

arrangement rituals, weddings, fast-breaking ceremonies, and, increasingly,
wedding fairs.11 Though the first three contexts often elide the body of a potential
wife with that of a realized wife, in the wedding fair unmarried women are
displayed exclusively as potential wives rather than embodied wives. The wed-
ding fair has developed in several South Asian communities as a way to facilitate
the early stages of marriage arrangements by providing information and in some
cases an opportunity to observe and meet many potential young men and
women at a single event. The four wedding fairs I attended in Pune in 2000,
2001, and 2003, and in Karad in 2001 were chaotic events with various families
jockeying for position before the meeting period even begins, and with strictly
controlled access, as only those who have been invited can attend.12
The format of a wedding fair is structured around three parts: the handing
out of the wedding registry, the presentation of young men and then young
women on stage, and the meeting period when families can exchange horo-
scopes and contact information.13 The bulk of the wedding fair involves a
hundred or so young men and young women who mount the stage and
introduce themselves. The audience then evaluates the candidates for confi-
dence, carriage, gait, attractiveness, and voice quality, while groups of audience
members rehearse what they know about the person and their family among
themselves. There were always many more men displayed for the public than
women, because there was a sense that this display of young women was
somewhat unseemly and because the young women were more reluctant to
participate. The sponsors of these events often had to cajole their female
relatives into appearing on stage, and these sponsors took great pride in the
beauty and status of the young women who were willing to appear on stage.
The women who are presented on stage negotiate a difficult passage between
looking like wives and maintaining the image of innocence. To appear too
wifely might suggest that the young woman is getting too old, while to appear
too innocent might suggest immaturity and unpreparedness. Wifely bodies
suggest sexuality and fertility, which can be both positive (evidence of readiness
for marriage and motherhood) and threatening (indicative of potential scandal
and the possible challenge to familial harmony). The resulting tension usually
leaves the young women looking embarrassed and shy, which ultimately works
to their favor by suggesting that they have proper shame.14
The potential wife, though, is not yet a wife, and the transformation from
young woman to wife is marked in wedding rituals of bodily inscription.
A woman’s body is inscribed as wifely first by her natal family in the literal
writing of wifehood on her skin through the application of wedding henna and
then by her affinal family in the rite of the pallu.15 Jains in my observation do
figure 6.1. The sisters of the groom dress their brother’s bride at pallu ritual
on the morning of the wedding. Pune, 2005.
not perform the rite of sindhūr dān, in which vermilion is placed in a woman’s
part of her hair by her groom in a symbolic deflowering of the bride (Ahearn
2001, 91–97; Bennett 1983, 86–87).16 This rite, which Jain women named as
the one in which the bride’s body is symbolically transferred to her husband’s
family, occurs before the wedding ceremony. The groom’s family arrives at a
gathering of the bride’s family with gifts of jewelry and saris for the bride. The
bride’s family accepts these gifts, and the bride is brought in and seated in the
front of the gathering. The groom’s sisters then remove the bride’s jewelry
(given by her natal family) and dress her in the jewelry given by the groom’s
family (figure 6.1). This transfer of her body to the groom’s family as an object
of control and appreciation can be traumatic; each time I have observed this
ritual, the bride silently cried through much of the ritual. During the rest of
the wedding rites, the bride is usually either thoughtful or even smiling until
the time of separation from her natal family, when again her body—this time
literally—is tearfully transferred to her groom’s family. The display of the
inscription of a woman’s body as wifely effects an irreversible shift in her
identity; even if she were to cease to be a wife (through divorce, widowhood,
or renunciation), she would not return to the state of an unmarried young
woman (kumārı̄ ). This public inscription is followed by the private and more
intimate inscription of her body as wifely when the couple consummate their
marriage.
When I have seen brides the day after their wedding and, presumably, after
the consummation of their marriage, they seem to be happy and excited,
though still nervous about the coming changes in their lives.17 They have not
seemed traumatized, and those with whom I was close enough to ask about
how they felt, all blushed at a question, which brought attention to their new
bodily status, but said they were happy. Puri (1999) found that the middle- and
upper-class women she interviewed had not experienced trauma at the con-
summation of their weddings, either. Of course, with the consummation of the
marriage, the bride’s body has been intimately and indelibly inscribed as wifely;
but that inscription was private, fully expected, and, perhaps, even desired. The
inscription of a women’s body is at the heart of the discourse of wifehood, as
her body serves as the site of her transformation through gesture, dress, and
the symbols of body transfer.
Resisting Parental Control
Models of agency that derive from resistance have been widely critiqued by
scholars (as discussed in chapter 1), but this does not mean that there is no
notion of resistance among Jain women. Not only did occasional young
women articulate resistance to social expectations: “I am not marrying that
guy” or “Even though my parents would like me to marry, I am committed
to becoming a nun,” but young women creatively used acts of compliance
to undermine the increased patriarchal control during the time leading up to
marriage. From the time of the onset of puberty—marked by a girl’s first
menstruation—and a young woman’s engagement, her body is being disci-
plined into a wifely body in preparation for the assumed marriage. Among
contemporary Jains there is a strong separation of notions of biological
puberty and a young woman’s readiness for marriage; women are usually
getting married in their early twenties—eight or more years after their first
menstruation. Therefore notions of a young woman’s readiness for marriage
are linked to her completion of studies, her emotional maturity, to signs of
interest in married life (interest in learning married women’s skills or spend-
ing time with engaged relatives), and the family’s preparedness for her
wedding. These older brides are less frightened of marriage and are consider-
ably more knowledgeable about at least some aspects of married life.18 In a
Jain context, the assumption of marriage is tempered by the possibility,
however unlikely, of ordination. Critiquing the representation (in Khandelwal,
Hauser, and Gold 2006) of renouncers as the sole agents of what she calls
“breaking away,” Gold (2006, 251) writes:
Some authors in this volume have argued persuasively that women

bound by many culturally sanctioned social constraints find a mode of
agency when they choose a path of renunciation. I want to simply add
that there may also be women who find it possible to break away, at
least partially, without saying so. That is, there may be women who
never depart from society or domesticity but whose lives express in
various fashions and to various degrees, a kind of shadow renunciant
way of life. These women may deliberately if subtly evoke renouncer
models both to seek spiritual fulfillment and to find freedoms beyond
given behavioral norms.
While this still celebrates women who “resist” rather than comply with social
norms, it also illustrates how complex the relationship between resistance and
compliance may be in lived experience. Contemporary young Jain women
illustrate Gold’s point well; unmarried Jain women perform rigorous nunlike
vows and fasts, which grant them both the freedom that unassailable virtue
affords a woman and the viability of their explorations of nunhood.
During the years while a young woman’s body is being inscribed as wifely,
these same young women destabilize that identity through the embodied
adoption of ritual practices that invoke the discourse of nunhood. There are
two satı̄ narratives of virgin nuns (bāla-brahmacārı̄), Brāhmı̄-Sundarı̄ and
Candanbālā, whose performative tellings illustrate how unmarried young
Jain women engage with the question of renunciation in embodied ways.
The story of the sisters Brāhmı̄ and Sundarı̄ is embedded in the larger narrative
of the conflict between their brothers: the universal ruler Bharata and the great
saint, Bāhubalı̄.19 The satı̄ narrative, even when told in its most elaborate form,
was brief. Below is the version found in Sulasā Candanbālā, a satı̄ narrative
collection recommended to me by a young Jain unmarried woman.
¯ HMI¯ AND SUNDARI¯ ’S STORY

BRA
Ādināth had two wives who each had a set of twins. The first had a son,
Bharat, and a daughter, Brāhmı̄, and the second had a son, Bāhubalı̄,
and a daughter, Sundarı̄. When Ādināth gave his first sermon,
hundreds of his sons and grandsons took ordination at his hand.
Brāhmı̄ asked her brother Bharat if she could renounce, and he gave her
permission. Sundarı̄ asked her brother, Bāhubalı̄, if she could renounce,
and he granted her permission, but her half-brother, Bharat told her not
to renounce. He was now the head of the family, so Sundarı̄ obeyed him
and became the first Jain laywoman. After many years, Bharat returned
and saw that Sundarı̄ was very gaunt. He was told that she had been
eating only dry food (āyambil) since she was denied ordination. Seeing
that she had really renounced already in her heart, Bharat gave her
permission to renounce, and Sundarı̄ rushed to Ādināth and
joyfully took ordination.
Sulasā Candanbālā 1987, 93–94
On the rare occasions when this story was told to me, it was usually illustrative
of the commitment some people had to renunciation, and how they resisted
male family members who tried to deny them the choice of renunciation. The
story centers around perseverance in the face of thwarted ambition, and it
describes the dangers of preventing a young woman’s ordination if that is
what she wants. The story takes the standard form of the ordination narrative
in which the young woman pines away until she is granted ordination: a goal
from which she never wavers. It reads a bit like what one expects from texts
written by mendicants in which the desire for renunciation is clear and uncom-
plicated except for the testing of the aspirations of the dı̄ksārthı̄ that prove her
˙
worthiness. A Jain nun typically tells the story of her ordination (and that of her
superiors) as an unquestioned and unwavering goal (Shāntā 1997, 577–579,
585–588).20 Young Jain women in the congregation displayed a fascination with
the “secret ordination” (cupı̄ dı̄ksā) of two Jain mendicants whose travels brought
˙
them routinely through Pune; these young women spoke of the courage these
renouncers must have had to renounce without the blessings of their families,
while at the same time adult Jain men and women repeatedly spoke of these two
renouncers as impulsive and criticized the mendicant orders for allowing secret
ordination; this rare generational gap illuminated romantic notions of resis-
tance held by the young women and concerns over the breakdown of proper
parental authority it represented to the adults.
There were a few young unmarried women who told me the story of
Sundarı̄ with some relish, describing in detail the way that her body withered
when she was denied access to her ambitions. I was struck by their fascination
with the way that Sundarı̄ literally embodied her choice to renounce; they went
into such detail about Sundarı̄’s body that it eclipsed the narrative. In my
observations, pining and fasting were among the few tools of resistance used
by young unmarried women who were unhappy with decisions made by
parents and uncles about their marriage futures. Loss of weight was character-
ized as a symptom of unhappiness and, also, the evil eye. Formal fasting
requires the permission of familial elders (usually grandmothers or mothers)
and frequent requests for fasts were investigated and discouraged, lest they be
evidence of some kind of unhappiness or a sign of interest in renunciation.
I have written elsewhere how overly enthusiastic fasting made Jains in one
young unmarried woman’s congregation speculate about whether she wanted
to become a nun (Kelting 2006b, 196–197). The families of prospective
grooms are watchful for signs of scandal, but also for signs of unhappiness,
which might indicate a dislike for the groom’s family or interest in becoming a
nun. Pining and fasting, then, can have some effect on a young woman’s
prospects, and usually garners the attention of female relatives (and brothers)
who may advocate on behalf of the young woman. If a young woman
wishes to fully separate herself from a parental decision, the most effective,
socially acceptable way would be to announce the intention to renounce. Wein-
berger-Thomas (2000, 22–23) notes that the vow to die a satı̄ is irrevocable and is
itself effective of the change of status. The same may be said of announcements of
the intention to renounce. Thus, the announcement of the intention to renounce
cannot function as leverage, because it is nearly impossible to reverse such
an announcement once it has been made publicly; rather, it is the possibility
of such an announcement that might carry weight. Young Jain women creatively
use this possibility to counter the pressures of compliance in matters of marriage
arrangements, but we must be careful not to assume that the decision to
renounce is primarily a form of resistance, for Jain discourse about women can
be as powerfully shaped by the ideologies of renunciation as it is by that
of wifehood.
Jain women engage with the possibilities of nunhood through the perfor-
mances of rituals, which partially embody the life of a nun and which afford
them the opportunity to explore the possibility of nunhood without stating any
intention. When a young woman is considering renunciation, a process of
“othering” the body begins, in which the young woman begins to separate her
sense of identity from her body, a kind of disembodiment, which expresses
itself in fasting (Vallely 2006, 233). Vallely (234) describes fasting and its
disembodying as a practice of both nuns and laywomen, starting around the

age of ten. She argues that for laywomen it is not necessarily a sign of worldly
detachment; however, in the period before marriage this fasting, especially if
the young woman performs difficult fasts, is evidence of her interest in
renunciation. In my observation, as well, intense fasting is read as an indica-
tion of interest in renunciation, but young women creatively used this interest
both to seriously consider renunciation and to garner a modicum of agency
regarding their marriage arrangements.
Trying out Nunhood
Many unmarried young Jain women engage with the possibilities of nunhood
even if they ultimately resolve themselves to wifehood. Fohr (2001, 168–169)
notes that those who are contemplating ordination may choose to do so before
marriage, because after marriage it is more difficult to renounce, and because
those who renounce before marriage are held in higher esteem and are
considered more powerful. When speaking with a young Gujarati woman
awaiting her ordination into the Tapā Gaccha, having publicly stated her
intention to renounce, Fohr asked if one should take ordination before getting
married and she answered: “Yes, if you wait until after your engagement or
marriage, then it is very difficult and you will bring grief to people like your
husband” (Fohr 2001, 171).21 In this and other interviews with nuns who had
renounced before marriage, Fohr found that among Śvetāmbar Jains it was
clear that one was choosing whether to be a wife or whether to renounce; to be
an unmarried adult woman would be unacceptable. One Marwari Sthānakavāsı̄
nun she interviewed put it this way: “There is a rule in our Marvari [culture]
that when a girl reaches twenty years of age, she gets married or takes dı̄ksā.
˙
She should decide what she wants to do. No one will keep an unmarried
_
(kunvārı̄) older girl in their house. [When I reached that age,] I told [everyone]
that I did not want to get married, [that] I would take dı̄ksā” (Fohr 2001, 170).
˙
Though spoken by a Marwari woman, the idea of a deciding moment when a
young woman chooses renunciation or marriage was widespread in my obser-
vation with both Marwari and Gujarati women.
Vallely (2002, 91–92) mentions that for Jain girls the role of attending
ordinations in creating an impulse to renounce—even if it is not acted upon—
is fueled by the majesty of the ordination as an event. In a similar sense,
I observed girls and young women likewise impressed by the importance and
attention granted to a young woman during the period of her engagement,
wedding, and the early days of marriage. In Reynell’s work on Jain women in
Jaipur, she gives several reasons—prestige, access to further education, charis-

matic nuns, the hard work of early wifehood, fear of child-bearing—why an
unmarried woman might choose to be a nun (Reynell 1985a, 249–260), but
equally important for our discussion, she also notes that there are reasons—
deformity, infertility, lack of dowry—why a woman might end up a nun even if
she might have preferred to be a wife (Reynell 1985a, 263–268).22 Reynell’s
lists indicate that both nunhood and wifehood are constructed as ideal lives
between which young women choose.
In practice, many young women engage with both wifehood and nunhood
and ultimately see themselves as choosing to marry. To illustrate my point, this
discussion will now turn to contexts in which young unmarried Jain women
embody ideologies of renunciation as an exploration of the possibility of
nunhood.23 This engagement with nunhood can involve complex vows or
less difficult fasts, both to be discussed below. There are a number of rituals
in which Jains choose to temporarily act like mendicants, ranging from the
simplest, a vow to live like a Jain mendicant for a day (posadh), to the most
˙
complex, a ritual in which one vows to live like a Jain mendicant for forty-five
days while performing a fast (Updhān fast).24 Laidlaw (1995, 174–179) writes
that, for the most part, the Updhān fast was undertaken by middle-aged or
older lay Jains as a rite of passage he likens to “training for retirement.” These
older Jains have fewer obligations in the home or business. Cort (2001b, 137)
observed that this vow was taken primarily by women, and suggested time
restraints as a reason why more men could not perform it. Older women with
daughters-in-law available to do the housework might be able both to take the
six weeks away from home and to perform the time-consuming daily rituals
that they would be expected to undertake after completing the vow. Tambiah
(1976, 200–203, 268–312) describes the temporary vows of monkhood under-
taken by Thai boys and young men in the Theravada tradition as a kind of life-
cycle rite that can contribute to the upward mobility of a Buddhist layman by
providing him with education and religious clout. Laidlaw (1995, 176–177)
argues that it is different for Jains; Jains do not permit temporary monkhood
(or nunhood). The Updhān is not renunciation, he argues, but practice for
taking lifelong formal lay vows (Laidlaw 1995, 177). This interpretation could
work for the elder Jains who take the Updhān vow, but in my observations few,
if any, of the Jains who performed the vow—old or young—took the lifelong
formal lay vows. Further, half of the forty-four participants in the Updhān fast
in Pune were unmarried young women, suggesting that this performance
must be evaluated in a different light.25 In Pune, these young women appeared
to be performing a kind of temporary nunhood and one that could (and in a few
cases, did) prepare them for renunciation.
The participants in the Updhān vow act as if they are novitiate nuns, and
gain valuable religious skills while being able to explore the experience of being a
nun without voicing any particular intention.26 I saw this vow fuel the explora-
tions into the prospects of renunciation among several young women. As
opposed to fasts undertaken for well-being such as the Navpad Olı̄ fast discussed
_
in chapter 4, the Updhān fast is rhetorically constructed for goals that fit under
the umbrella of the path of liberation. At the completion of the Updhān vow,
there is a major four-day program celebrating the participants’ achievement. The
most significant moment of this celebration is when the fasters are garlanded
with the garland of liberation (moksa-mālā). This blessing signifies a kind of
˙
mini-ordination, as the presiding mendicant garlands each participant after they
have completed all of the rites. A person can only wear this garland of liberation
one time in his or her life, as the garland symbolizes a participant’s transforma-
tion into a new identity, which is irrevocable. As part of the completion of the
vow, each participant agrees to a number of austerities in order to expiate errors
committed before and during the vow. In addition to these austerities, many
Updhān participants take lifelong vows at the end of the Updhān.27
During the Updhān, participants learn some of the gestures and move-
ments of mendicants, which they then continue to perform to some degree
after the vow is completed. The vow requires the thrice-daily examination of
one’s clothing, objects, and space for insects, and penance for any injury caused
to these insects. During the time of the Updhān, this requirement disciplines
the participants’ bodies to avoid unnecessary movement, and to perform the
characteristic gesture of brushing the ground with a cloth broom before they
move—an act performed even in their sleep during this vow. This discipline
heightens the participants’ awareness of their bodies beyond the already con-
strained expectations of women in this community, and profoundly affects
their body practices, at least for the duration of the vow. They also learn the
movements associated with the rite of confession (especially the choreographic
gestures of prostrations), which those who have completed the vow thereafter
continue to perform in the manner that nuns do—clearly marking them
during congregational performances from then on.
Laidlaw (1995, 177) states that the Updhān is specifically not related to
ordination and, in the sense of a permanent vow of renunciation, I agree; for
unmarried women, the Updhān seems to be an exploration into nunhood.
That said, Divyaprabhāśrı̄jı̄, the nun who guided the women at the 1999—
2000 Updhān near Pune, spoke to me explicitly about the connection between
the Updhān and ordination, explaining that it serves as “practice” for those
who might consider ordination. After the Updhān is complete, the faster is
permitted to recite certain prayers that form part of the ritual confession that
only mendicants and those who have completed an Updhān may recite. In a
sense, those who complete the Updhān can serve as surrogate mendicants at
events where mendicants are not present. Although married laywomen
performing the Updhān did not speak of it as practice for ordination, they
did see it as being like a mini-ordination (dı̄ksā jaisı̄ hai) that increased their
˙
commitment to liberation-directed praxis while permitting them to remain
laywomen. Among married women, there may be some for whom the adop-
tion of religious vows associated with nuns (twice-daily pratikraman, lifelong
_
restricted eating, and celibacy) grant them an interstitial position conforming
to the ideologies of renunciation and liberation, while living as wives; these
women must get permission from their husbands or mothers-in-law to take
lifelong vows, however, because they explicitly draw a wife’s attention away
from marital duties. Widows often adopt these nunlike vows, for which they
need no permission from their families, as part of their focus on spiritual
liberation once their focus on wifehood is over.
To what extent, then, does the Updhān function as an opportunity to
explore the possibilities of nunhood for these unmarried women? Of the
twenty-one unmarried young women who performed the Pune Updhān fast
in 2000, there was only one who at the close of the Updhān stated her
intention of becoming a nun, another who chose to become a nun in 2003,
and one other, still unmarried, continues to struggle with the decision.28 These
are only three women, but this is nearly fifteen percent of the unmarried
performers of the vow, which is well above the percentages of women who
choose nunhood from the total of all young women (approximately one every
out of fifty thousand).29 Most of the young women who performed this
Updhān are now married. However, it would be an error to assume that the
resolution in marriage for these women indicates that they did not consider
nunhood. In fact, three of the young women who performed the Updhān in
2000 and subsequently married told me that during the Updhān and the
period following the completion of the vow, they seriously considered renunci-
ation. None of these women spoke of this consideration until after they were
safely married, despite the wide range of intimate topics they were willing to
talk about with me.30 The exploration of the choice between marriage and
ordination is one that was only rarely and discretely discussed until after it was
made. In these postmarital conversations, it became clear to me that the
Updhān was a kind of trial nunhood for those who were considering ordina-
tion before they made the choice to get married. The Updhān and its fast
breaking can fortify a young woman’s marriage prospects by proving her virtue
and her family’s prosperity (Kelting 2006b, 196–198), while at the same time
allowing her a safe context in which to consider the option of renunciation.
The Candanbālā Fast
We now turn to the performance of the story of Candanbālā and its accom-
panying fast. Although a few young women might choose to undertake a vow
like the Updhān, much the same kinds of benefits—for example, karma
reduction, merit making, display of one’s virtue, performance of family sta-
tus—can be gained from shorter fasts where the participants do not live as
nuns and that do not carry the risk of making a young woman seem too
religious.31 For young women who are not as clearly exploring the possibility
of nunhood, other rituals, which also invoke the discourse of renunciation
without the same level of commitment, are commonly performed. The young
women who performed the Candanbālā fast in 2000 and in 2001 in Pune were
manipulating the discourse of renunciation to creatively embody wifehood
through their performance of the rituals associated with this fast and its
narrative.
Candanbālā’s story stands alone in the virgin nun satı̄ (bāla-brahmacārı̄
satı̄ ) narratives as the one most widely known and told. Candanbālā’s story was
told to me by both women and men from all demographics. Among young
unmarried women, it was sometimes the only satı̄ story they told. Her story,
like that of Maynāsundarı̄ and Rājul, was told to me many times both casually
_
in ritual contexts, and when I asked about the narrative. The story’s popularity
may arise from its relationships to Mahāvı̄r, to a popular fast, and to its apt
representation of the paradoxical emotional landscape of Jainism (Kelting
2007).32 Perhaps this story is particularly appealing to unmarried young
women because it reflects the state that these women are in: a state of incipi-
ence between protected innocence and the maturity expected as they separate
from their natal families. They, like Candanbālā at the climax of her story, stand
at a threshold. Until they do marry, the joys of marriage are not available to
them; even in conversation, these young women are not permitted socially to
discuss their own marriage, desires, or sexuality in any way. These young
women stand on the threshold of wifehood, not yet married, but fully expected
to become wives.
I include below the version of Candanbālā’s story found in a popular satı̄
_
narrative collection, Sol Mahāsatı̄o (1998, 166–187).
_
CANDANBA ¯ LA
¯ ’S STORY
In Campā city, a daughter, Vasumatı̄, is born to King Dadhivāhan and

Queen Dhārinı̄, both Jains. When Campā is sacked, a camel trader
_
grabs the queen—who dies on the spot—and Vasumatı̄. He decides to
sell Vasumatı̄ as a slave in Kauśambi. When she is about to be sold into

prostitution, she is saved by a troop of monkeys. Then a Jain merchant
named Dhanā sees Vasumatı̄ and realizes that she cannot be an
ordinary slave, but must be a kidnapped princess. He buys her and
decides to raise her as his own daughter until her family finds her.
Because of her beauty, they call her Candanbālā (Hair-like-
Sandalwood).
One day the merchant’s wife sees her husband touching
Candanbālā’s hair as Candanbālā washes his feet and suspects it is the
first step toward her husband taking a second wife. Soon after this, the
merchant leaves home to travel for business. The merchant’s wife then
has Candanbālā’s hair shaved off, and has her bound with chains and
locked in a distant corner of the house. When the merchant returns
three days later, he asks after Candanbālā, and his wife lies to him that
she is outside or asleep. Finally, the merchant finds Candanbālā
shaven, chained, with tears in her eyes, and having not had anything to
eat or drink for three days. He searches for something for her to eat, but
there is only a winnowing basket full of lentils (udad dal ). Candanbālā
_
vows that she will eat only after giving food to a monk.
At this very moment, Mahāvı̄r comes seeking alms. He has been
fasting for five months and twenty-five days awaiting a suitable donor:
a princess who is now a slave standing on the threshold with her head
shaved, dressed in white, crying while sorting lentils in a winnowing
basket. Candanbālā stands in the doorway of her room with the
winnowing basket full of lentils and calls to Mahāvı̄r that he should
take alms. He refuses her because she is not crying and she begins to
weep. Because she then fulfills all the criteria of his vow, he returns to
take alms. At the fulfillment of his vow, the gods shower them both
with gold, her chains break off, her long beautiful hair miraculously
returns, and she is known immediately to be the princess Vasumatı̄.
Candanbālā’s blossoming womanhood prevents her from staying a daughter.33

Her developing beauty and its implied sexuality lead her adopted mother to no
longer see her as a daughter, but to see her as a potential co-wife. This
transformation from a daughter to a potential wife of someone else happens
to all Jain women, and all Jain parents must recognize this potential sexuality
in order to identify readiness for marriage arrangements. The implied incest in
the Candanbālā narrative suggests the potential of sexual misconduct—here in
its worst form, incest—in a woman who is left unmarried for too long. To leave
a daughter unmarried is to court trouble; an unmarried daughter may become
involved with someone and create a scandal, which hurts her marriage possi-
bilities and the reputation of the whole family. Jain parents control their
daughter’s sexuality through social constraints and the discipline of her body.
In this way, religious rituals are a safe place to display one’s marriage-ready
daughters without risking scandal. However, they do not desexualize her as
Candanbālā was desexualized—for Candanbālā ultimately does not become a
wife, but a nun; rather they use strict rules about being outside the home,
chaperones, and other social restrictions to protect their daughter’s reputation
while allowing her incipient womanhood to be recognized among the female
relatives of potential marriage partners.
Because of Candanbālā’s wrongly perceived potential sexual misconduct,
she is transformed into a person outside society, invoking slavery (the binding
of chains and the shaved head) and widowhood (the shaving of her head and
also, according to popular tellings, dressing her in white clothes). All the
imagery, whether of slave or widow, effectively removes her sexuality as a
threat. Candanbālā turns her neglect into a religious act by declaring that she
will not break her “fast” until she has fed a worthy mendicant. In this way she
gains a kind of control over her suffering by retroactively declaring it to be her
intention. After her vow is completed, she returns to her beautiful state, and
her identity as a princess becomes known—she is ideally suitable for marriage.
Candanbālā’s virtue is proven and she is reintegrated into the household as a
daughter, but an adult daughter soon to leave either for marriage or renuncia-
tion. Candanbālā soon renounces, abandoning her status as a princess as well
as her beauty and her potential wifehood. Though few women included in oral
tellings the renunciation coda to the story, they were all aware that Candanbālā
later renounced, because they were also aware that she is named as the head of
the nuns under the Jina, Mahāvı̄r.34
In the representation of Candanbālā’s ultimate beauty and marriageability,
the story of Candanbālā mirrors the discourse of the marriageable young
woman who renounces anyway, the nun who could have married a prince. In
lay culture, on the few occasions when nuns were spoken of in negative terms
(and this was almost exclusively done by laymen) it was usually said that these
were women who could not get married or whose families did not want to pay
dowries. The lavishness of the ordination itself and descriptions of the good
marriage prospects rejected by the nun counter any suggestions that the
ordination is covering up some inability to get married. Vallely writes of one
nun who was especially beautiful that her very beauty was seen as evidence of
her spirituality—she had much to renounce (Vallely 2002, 109)—in much
the same way that she was told that the nuns (and monks) came from rich
families. Vallely writes: “Renunciation is meaningful only within a context of
abundance, and a life of detachment can be best observed in a vicinity of

wealth” (Vallely 2002, 88). In February 1994, at a ordination in Pune, several
male relatives of a future nun approached me and pointed out that the young
woman was beautiful and educated, that “she could have married anyone.”
This served both to remind me of all that she was renouncing (to demonstrate
her commitment) and to draw my attention toward their recognition of her
potential wifehood (to illustrate her agency, and that her family had given her
all that she needed and could have paid her dowry) to demonstrate that she was
not pressured by her family to renounce.
Candanbālā’s story invokes the ambivalence that young women feel about
their approaching marriages, about the simpler choice to be a wife and the less
common choice to be a nun, and about the restrictions that surround their
bodies as they become potentially sexual. It is Candanbālā’s budding sexuality
that prompts her foster mother to imprison her. In a way that parallels this
story, young women’s lives are constricted and controlled in an effort to prevent
their sexuality from being a threat to family honor and to the marriage
prospects of that young woman and her unmarried siblings and cousins.
Young women I spoke to did talk about the constraints they felt after the
onset of puberty and even more so as marriage arrangements were beginning.
One young woman whose marriage prospects were not very good spoke of her
life as being like that of an animal in the zoo: “locked up and sometimes people
come to look at me.” Another young woman whose prospects were quite good
told me that she felt as if she were bound to her house while her marriage
arrangements were taking place. In both of these cases we see how the young
women felt bodily bound by the new restraints on their actions and used the
image of imprisonment to describe their experiences.35
As in most substantial Jain fasts, the Candanbālā fast’s fast breaking is
marked by a public function. This three-day fast ends with a ceremony in
which the fasters reenact the climactic moment of Candanbālā’s story.36 They
approach the threshold of a makeshift hut with their hands and feet bound by
chains, wearing all-white clothing with their hair loose in order to feed a Jain
mendicant before they themselves break their three-day fast (figure 6.2). As
they stand in for Candanbālā, a mendicant stands in for Mahāvı̄r; there is a
presumption, too, that some approximation of Candanbālā’s good fortune will
also ensue. One common fasting manual, Taporatna Mahodadhi, gives instruc-
tions: “For the fast breaking of the Candanbālā fast one needs to have on
hand a winnowing fan whose corner is filled with boiled lentils and with this
one offers alms to the monk. One’s feet and hands should be bound by a
skein of thread or silk which falls off after giving the monk his alms” (Tapor-
atna Mahodadhi 1989, 161–162).37 Feeding the monk signifies successful
figure 6.2. A participant in the Candanbālā fast offers alms to a Jain monk before
breaking her own three-day fast. The ritual fast-breaking is an imitation of Candanbālā’s
˙
offering alms to Mahāvı̄r. Śrı̄ Ajitnāth Jain Temple, Pune, 2001. Photograph by
Steven C. Runge.
completion of the fast, which results in freedom from bonds—here, both the
literal bonds of the thread and the figurative bonds of karma. Because the
sponsoring mendicant has also been fasting, the offering from the fasters
actually—and not just figuratively or dramatically—breaks the mendicant’s
fast. Feeding monks and nuns is always meritorious, as is giving food to
anyone who is breaking a fast. Here, these two acts are combined making
the offering to the monk especially meritorious. The ceremony then does not
merely portray or signify the salient features of Candanbālā’s story, it also
makes an effort to make those features real, suggesting that the merit and
the breaking of the karmic bonds for the participants is also real.
The instructions for the ceremony make no mention of a dramatic reen-
actment of the Candanbālā story or, for that matter, hair, princesses, or any
results.38 However, these elements seem to be standard in the two dramatic
fast-breaking ceremonies I observed in 2000, sponsored by the Tapā Gacch
nun Divyaprabhāśrı̄jı̄ and the other in 2001 by the Tapā Gacch monk Muni
Devguptavijayjı̄, both of which were similar to ones observed by Reynell in
Jaipur (personal communication). As the drama unfolds, it will become plain
that the “skein or thread of silk” is understood to be shorthand for a host of
dramatic actions. I will use the 2001 Candanbālā fast as the basis for my
description because it particularly highlighted the participants’ embodied per-
formances of this fast.39
In the days leading up to the 2001 Candanbālā fast, Devguptavijayjı̄ point-
edly inserted references to the Candanbālā narrative into his morning sermons.
On the day before the fast-breaking ceremony, he made a special point of saying
that those who were offering him alms as part of the Candanbālā fast breaking
should have tears in their eyes.40 On the day of the fast breaking the women who
had completed the fast were gathered in the mendicant’s hostel (upaśray)
dressed in white and accompanied by their families. The day before, there
had been an auction for the privilege to be the first ten of the “Candanbālās”
to offer alms to the monk, and a small stage set comprising a small cloth-walled,
thatched-roof hut was constructed. The almsgiving to Devguptavijayjı̄ was
embedded in a dramatic retelling of the Candanbālā story. When it came to
the climactic moment in the narrative when Candanbālā offers alms to Mahāvı̄r,
the “Candanbālās” stood up one by one and prepared to have their hands and
feet bound so that they could offer the alms from the winnowing basket in the
doorway of the hut, according to the ritual instructions. Devguptavijayjı̄, who, it
must be said, is a bit of showman, left the hall so that he could enter in the
manner in which he would normally do when on begging rounds. When he saw
the tears in the faster’s eyes, he accepted the lentils. As I observed the fast
breaking, each young woman in turn did cry, and most cried copious tears,
which began as they stepped to the threshold of the hut.41 While observers
(married or widowed women) spoke of the weeping as appropriate demonstra-
tion of the devotional sentiment in the young women (Kelting 2007, 132), I was
struck by this uncharacteristic display of emotion and its concentration in the
performances of unmarried young women exclusively. Thus, the young women
performing this fast so effectively embodied Candanbālā’s body practices in
order to successfully complete the fast that they produced tears—presumably a
reflection not merely of body practice but also of deep-seated emotion.
Most of the fasters who participated in the Candanbālā fast were young
women of marriageable age. Some of them told me that this fast would
help them be more beautiful—especially by giving them more lovely hair—
and make them more eligible as potential wives (Kelting 2009a). The expecta-
tion was strong enough and widespread enough that Devguptavijayjı̄ joked
about how those who performed the fast would have beautiful hair. In
the Candanbālā fast we find the closest parallelism between the story and its
ritual practice. I found widespread belief among the young women who
performed this fast that the parallel experience would, by binding the same
kinds of karma, create the same results as those experienced by Candanbālā: in
figure 6.3. Candanbālā wall painting showing her miraculous feeding of the Jina
Mahāvı̄r and her spontaneous reappearance as an auspicious free woman. This image of
Candanbālā visually borrows from satı̄mātā images. Amı̄jharā Pārśvanāth Jain Temple,
Junnar, Maharashtra.
sum, that they would be beautiful and marriageable and that they would
become, in some senses, eligible princesses.
The results of Candanbālā’s vow and almsgiving to Mahāvı̄r are widely
represented. Though some temple paintings only show the moment before the
alms touch Mahāvı̄r’s bowl, in the many images that illustrate Candanbālā’s
miraculous moment we find that not only has her hair grown back beautifully
but she is also be-jeweled, dressed in a red sari, with her lovely hair loose. Her
release from bondage is a return to the world of wifehood. She is not portrayed
as a girl but rather as a fortunate woman whose husband is alive (saubhāgya-
vatı̄), in a manner similar to a satı̄mātā. In a temple wall painting, both
representations of Candanbālā are presented side by side (figure 6.3).42 The
young women who performed this fast wanted to likewise achieve that good
fortune and have long and happy marriages.
Candanbālā is not a nun, and yet her austerities and the rejection of her
beauty suggest nunhood. On the other hand, the fast requires a faster to make
a donation of food to a mendicant—the quintessential laywoman’s act in
Jainism; thus for all her austerity and her subsequent renunciation, Candan-
bālā is positioned as a laywoman whose status in society in ambiguous. Unlike
the Updhān fast, there was not a sense that the Candanbālā fast indicated any
profound tendencies toward renunciation. When young women embody Can-
danbālā, they perform a kind of abbreviated nunhood, which, in the paradoxi-
cal logic of the collision of womanhood and Jainism, allows them to become
women—women who will marry. Where is Candanbālā’s renunciation in all
this? In the story, it is reported summarily, not narrated in the dramatic fashion
of her return to womanhood. Renunciation, I would argue, remains in a
similar place in these young women’s lives: it is not absent, but only exists as
a dramatic reenactment or a reported possibility; for most young women, it is
something to keep in mind, but not something to imagine with too much
specificity. To be heroic like Candanbālā is to be a marriageable Jain princess—
that is, a woman who could choose not to be a wife.
To illustrate this tension between ideologies centered around Candanbālā,
I will describe the climax of both a Jain ordination and one dramatic perfor-
mance of the Candanbālā story, which preceded the 2001 fast breaking. The
climactic moment of the ordination of a Tapā Gacch Jain nun happens when
she receives the cloth broom, which represents her acceptance of her mendi-
cant vows (Kelting 2001b, 55). When the broom is dropped in her hands, the
new nun spins holding the broom aloft, with her soon-to-be removed hair
swirling around her in the rajoharan dance (see figure 5.3). In 2001, one of the
_
young women performing the Candanbālā fast wrote and performed a short
play based on the Candanbālā story, and at the climactic moment when
Mahāvı̄r accepts her alms, her chains broke off, her hair was let loose to swirl
as she spun round and round holding up her winnowing fan. This young
woman—who had attended many ordinations—superimposed the celebratory
choreography of renunciation onto Candanbālā’s celebration of her return to
freedom and beauty. The Candanbālā drama was a negative image of the
rajoharan dance at a nun’s ordination; on one hand, a nun dressed in bridal
_
clothing holds the broom—a symbol of her renunciation—and on the other, a
young woman dressed like a nun (all in white) holds aloft the winnowing fan—
a symbol of wifehood and, in this case, the donor of alms.
The Candanbālā story and its paired dramatizations could be said to define
what it is to come of age as a Jain woman. Candanbālā’s transformation follows
a symbolic transformation from girl-princess to slave to daughter to incipient
wife to an ambiguous status of slave/widow/nun to adult princess with only
one moment of volition—when Candanbālā decides to fast until she has fed a
monk. It is only in her piety that Candanbālā can assert control over her
identity as she moves into adulthood and, as a result of her piety, she is given
choice: she can stay a princess and marry or she can renounce and become a
nun. Her metamorphosis into an agent comes about because of her passionate
attachment to freeing herself from karmic attachment and devotion to the

order of Jain mendicants. Young Jain women were given freedom to embody
themselves in the context of religious rituals, and they participated in these
enthusiastically. Through their ritual practices, these women convert the disci-
pline of their newly adult bodies into religious acts similar to Candanbālā’s
conversion of her punishment into a meritorious fast.43 The bodily constraints,
then, become virtues, and a young woman can channel the merit of her
compliance toward whichever identity she is about to choose. But these ritual
embodiments are not simple identities with clear archetypes like “wife” or
“nun” but rather identification with a young woman whose identity is ambigu-
ous. The ambiguity of Candanbālā mirrors that of young women, and both are
alternately given freedoms based on parental assumptions about their maturity
and virtue and on controls based on perceived risks of scandal. Candanbālā’s
character vacillates suddenly and dramatically between “freedom” and “captivi-
ty,” both literally and karmically. This movement back and forth between
freedom and captivity was likewise articulated among young Jain women
who were approaching marriage.
Thresholds
Jain satı̄s do not cross gender lines or the imagined boundary of modesty
(purdah); the border crossing for Jain women is between wives and nuns.
The tension experienced by young Jain women is that created by the opposing
ideologies of wifehood and renunciation. It is here that Jain satı̄ discourse
enters into an arena that falls outside the possibility of Hindu discourse. The
possibility of satı̄s as antimarriage ideals (as we see in Sundarı̄’s story and also
in the renunciation coda to Candanbālā’s) would be in too much conflict with
pativratā discourse to be really integrated into the Hindu satı̄ discourse with its
absolute and unifocused centrality of pativratā. Harlan draws our attention to
this problem in her writings on Mı̄rābāı̄, who does not conform to the pativratā
model and is therefore rejected as a potential satı̄ (despite some very compel-
ling mythic parallels) (Harlan 1995a, 209–210, 220–221). There is, as I men-
tioned earlier, a counterdiscourse of renunciation in Hinduism, but it does not
exert pressure on women; women who choose to renounce in Hindu commu-
nities do so against the pressures to comply with the ideology of wifehood
(Khandelwal 2004, 181–182). For married Jain women, nunhood exists as
an escape clause from marriage, but not one they are likely to invoke. For
unmarried young Jain women, nunhood stands in opposition to wifehood, and
both ideologies exert their influence on these women’s body practices and
explorations of what it might mean to be an adult woman. These explorations

occur just as the young women are incipient adults being inscribed as future
wives by the social expectations of proper body practices. Unable to put these
explorations into words, young women strategically deploy apparent compli-
ance with the ideology of wifehood—through the performance of premarital
fasts—while creating space for their experiments with embodying nunhood
and wifehood in ways that grant themselves the choice between the two.
These explorations mark a period of great insecurity about one’s future.
The young women who awaited their marriage arrangements often filled their
time with religious events and fasts. There were two outbursts of tears asso-
ciated with the 2001 Candanbālā fast, which were not part of the fast breaking
proper, and which illustrated the emotional upheaval experienced by young
women as they and their cohort of sisters, cousins, and friends are one by one
married. Recall the day before the fast breaking, Devguptavijay instructed the
participants to imagine being unable to feed Mahāvı̄r himself, which should
bring on tears. After his moving description of Candanbālā’s lament, one
young woman who was performing the fast herself began to sob during the
sermon. While outbreaks of emotion are usually socially discouraged, conver-
sations after the sermon repeated that her tears were evidence of her good
sentiments (bhāv) and indicated the young woman’s high level of virtue be-
cause she felt such empathy for Candanbālā. The young woman herself told
me that she wept because she understood how desperate Candanbālā felt when
she was rejected; she then told me about the anxiety she felt about her own
marriage arrangements.
At the fast breaking the next day, when the line of “Candanbālās” had all
given their alms, Devguptavijayjı̄ asked a young woman from the audience to
come up and offer him alms. She had been incapable of performing the fast
(and her parents would not let her), being quite seriously underweight; during
the fast-breaking, she had started to sob, because all her cousin-sisters were
participating. Devguptavijayjı̄ invited her to make the alms offering, because
he saw her tears. She entered the hut, had her hands and feet bound and,
while weeping, offered him lentils from the winnowing fan. Afterward, every-
one seemed to agree that Devguptavijayjı̄ had done the right thing in asking
her to make the offering, because it was clear that the sentiments (bhāv) of both
the mendicant and the young woman were correct. It is perhaps a stretch, but
after many conversations with the young woman, it seemed to me that her
tears were partly a reflection of being left behind as her cousin-sisters crossed
over the threshold into adulthood.
By way of a final example that illuminates the tensions of young women’s
embodiment of satı̄s, let me describe a program held in honor of Nemināth
and Rājul on Śrāvan bright fifth in 2006 in Shivajinagar. The program opened
_
with a brief pūjā to Nemināth followed by a short drama depicting Rājul’s
wedding preparations and Nemi’s rejection of her. These were followed by a
“Rājul contest” and a Rājul song singing contest. The drama centered around
a scene in which Rājul and her mother anticipated Nemi’s arrival while the
mother worried that Rājul would be struck down by the evil eye because of her
good fortune. They were informed that Nemi was not coming, and they wept
together until Rājul decided to renounce, upon which the drama ended. For the
Rājul contest, girls and young unmarried women were asked to reenact the
role of Rājul in some way. For the Rājul song-singing contest, which wrapped
up the program, contestants were asked to prepare their favorite hymn asso-
ciated with Rājul.44 The Rājul contest had fourteen contestants: eight girls and
six young unmarried women.45 The girls mostly recited short speeches or sang
short songs and retreated. The young unmarried women wrote and performed
more complex dramatic reenactments of the Rājul story; the six performances
by these young women were each at least ten minutes long, fully choreo-
graphed, and melodramatically rendered. The pathos of Rājul’s experience of
being rejected was represented with copious tears running down the young
women’s faces while they wept and lamented, slumping to the floor. In each
case, I was struck by the powerful representation of emotion these young
women brought to the performance, when these same young women giggled
through most of their other public performances. The performances of Rājul
seemed to function as a catharsis; several of the young unmarried women in
the audience were also overtaken by tears. The emotional outbursts of these
young women were very uncharacteristic of Jain programs, and none of the
other women present—young girls, married women, or widows—showed any
hint that they might themselves begin to cry. The weeping of these young
women and their friends in the audience resonated for me with the tears shed
as part of the Candanbālā fast, and led me to reconsider the links between these
two ritual performances.
Candanbālā and Rājul are satı̄s who stand at the threshold; Candanbālā is
described as literally having one foot inside the threshold and one foot outside
it, while Rājul is described as standing under the door garland. These two satı̄s
represent incipience. They are about to transform: Candanbālā into a marriage-
able princess and then ultimately a nun; and Rājul first into a bride, then, after
being rejected, into a kind of widow, and finally, as she prepares to leave, into a
nun/satı̄. These two narratives are the favorites of unmarried young women,
who themselves are in the process of transformation. Nearly all the partici-
pants in the Candanbālā fast and almost half of the Rājul contest contestants
were young unmarried women, who were themselves at the threshold of
marriage and who identified, however briefly, with two satı̄s whose paths are
not straight and simple, but complex and seemingly out of their control. Both
Candanbālā and Rājul take control of their futures (Candanbālā by taking the
vow to fast and Rājul by deciding to renounce); while standing at the threshold
they recapture their lives and their futures. The young unmarried women
themselves choose to reembody these two satı̄s’ transformations at the very
time that their own lives are beyond their articulation, control and, perhaps,
even understanding. In both cases the reenactments of the satı̄ stories focus on
the satı̄ on the threshold. However, the differences are telling; in the Candan-
bālā fast reenactment, the young women break their chains and let loose their
hair, materializing as marriageable, while in the Rājul contest, the participants
reenact her lamenting and sorrow (and in one case her resolve to renounce, but
not the actual transformation into a nun).46 The young women were in each
case dramatizing and, especially in the Rājul contest, romanticizing the satı̄s’
agency, but stopped short of identifying with nunhood—an end few of these
young women seek.
This exploration of nunhood is not a resistance to marriage (as renuncia-
tion might be), but rather a complex engagement with the possibility of choice.
Though I met several young women who, after they were married, said that
they had considered ordination before they were married, all claimed (and I
believed them) to be happy with their choice to be wives.47 In fact, they seemed
markedly more content that the other new brides I observed. One young
married woman reported to me one day that a nun had asked her whether or
not she had ever considered becoming a nun. She told me that she had, in fact,
thought long and hard about renunciation and that she had hoped that she
would want to be a nun, but that the desire to abandon the world (vairāgya) had
not arisen in her despite her piety. She finally decided that she would not
become a nun and became a more willing participant in her marriage arrange-
ments; her marriage was successfully arranged, and she seems a very happy
wife. Two young married women who told me that they were unsure about
whether they were happy in their newly married lives, on the other hand, had
told me that they never considered being nuns at all. There are a number of
explanations. Perhaps the period of contemplation of renunciation gives these
satisfied young wives a sense of agency that gets them through the difficult
period of adjustment. Or, perhaps, the young women who contemplated
ordination were the ones whose marriages were not easily arranged and thus
they were grateful that they were able to get married. Or, perhaps, the unhappy
wives were those young women whose prospects seemed good enough to make
renunciation seem like an unnecessary option and to make promises that
marriage could not fulfill.
At the very least, for young women on the threshold of marriage, the
Candanbālā fast and the Rājul contest seemed to serve as sites for expressing
the complex explorations of their choice between marriage and renunciation.
As marriage age approaches, young women’s bodies are inscribed as wifely,
while they themselves choose to embody both wifely and nunlike roles. This
embodiment allows them to communicate through complex choreographies
their anxiety about the transformation of their persons, their ambivalence
about these changes, and in the end, their resolve to marry or occasionally to
renounce. This sense of agency fuels much of Jain laywomen’s discourse about
being wives, and though the histories told by women who have been married
for some time often comply with the discourse of wifehood, the choreographies
of young unmarried women tell us a story of negotiation and experimentation.
Conclusion
The Pleasures of Jain Wifehood
During many years of research, which developed into this study, I was
struck by the seeming incongruity between the difficulties and hard
work of being a Jain wife and the satisfaction with being wives that
women expressed to me over and over again. The pleasures of Jain
wifehood seemed linked to the Jain notions of the value of laywomen
in general, the agential discourse of wifehood in the Jain tradition,
and the texts and rituals that celebrate wifehood. Much of this
book focuses on the ways that Jain women negotiate the seemingly
paradoxical imperatives of Jain wifehood’s ideologies: pativratā and
liberation. The narrative trajectories of the Jain satı̄s grant laywomen
precedents for adapting what is considered meritorious behavior
in one context—moksa mārg—to being meritorious in another—
˙
pativratā and saubhāgya. The choice to be a wife, made in the context
of powerful tensions between these ideologies and performed in the
fasts and rituals associated with Jain satı̄s, results in a rescripting of
moksa-mārg practices—associated with renunciation—into practices
˙
appropriate to wifehood and family. Though these two rest uneasily
together, they are woven into a coherent discourse of Jain wifehood.
The narrative and rituals associated with the satı̄ Maynāsundarı̄
˙
best illustrate this process of integration, and were the ones most
often named as central to the performance of Jain wifehood. The
Āyambil Olı̄ festival—which, it may be recalled, centers around the
_
story of the Maynāsundarı̄’s marriage with King Śrı̄pal—ranks second
˙ _
only to Paryusan for the expression of Jain normative values as Jains
˙ ˙
172 HEROIC WIVES
gather to fast and to venerate the siddhacakra, itself a representation of all that
is worthy of worship in Jainism. The significance of the normative value placed
on the Āyambil Olı̄ must be seen side by side with the overt celebration of
_
wifehood and marital happiness that are reenacted and fortified by participa-
tion in the festival. Women participating in the Āyambil Olı̄ are conforming
_
fully with normative Jainism and its veneration of liberated beings, mendi-
cants, and the tenets of Jainism; this is not an act of resistance in any way, and
yet it serves the individual interests and desires of women in the context of a
patriarchal society.
The ideal companionate marriage of King Śrı̄pal and mahāsatı̄ Maynāsun-
˙
darı̄ and its ritual creation and display at the heart of the Āyambil Olı̄ posit
_
a mandate for wifely virtue. Maynāsundarı̄’s ritual practice, of course, brought
˙
her husband and his mother from leper colony to their rightful place as
the prosperous rulers of Campa. Insofar as she brings good fortune to her
marital family, she is positioned like a Laksmı̄ of the house. Jains, like Hindus,
˙
posit the new bride as the goddess Laksmı̄ entering the household (Reynell
˙
1985a, 131). The new bride is auspicious and considered lucky; if prosperity
follows the wedding of a son, his wife is often referred to as a Laksmı̄ of the
˙
house (gharlaksmı̄). The Jain bride embodies this conception of Laksmı̄, but
˙ ˙
Maynāsundarı̄ as the perfect Jain wife serves as a dharmapatnı̄; although she
˙
certainly brings good fortune and well-being to her new home, she brings these
boons through normatively Jain channels by teaching and modeling virtuous
behavior, from which each person benefits.1 Through a Jain woman’s being a
pious role model and her teaching of liberation-directed rituals, she garners
marital happiness by improving the virtue of her husband and his family, which
earns them merit. Maynāsundarı̄’s liberation-directed worship also works mag-
˙
ically with an alchemizing of liberation-directed practices into worldly results.
Rather than creating tension, ultimately, in the context of wifehood, the
two paths underwrite each others’ legitimacy; the wifely practices of Jain wives
(such as the Āyambil Olı̄ or other fasts) result in liberation-directed outcomes,
_
such as karma reduction, and their liberation-directed practices can also result
in wifely merit. For the wife, the satı̄s’ demonstrated potential of liberation
integrates liberation-directed practices with their meritorious results both in
the here and now of wifehood and an individual wife’s soul’s movement toward
liberation. In this way, the heroic wives of the satı̄ narratives are multivalent,
operating as role models for women considering renunciation, who find in the
satı̄s psychologically credible stories of decisions to renounce; for any lay
person, who finds in the stories models for living virtuously in the world in
ways that reinforce, rather than conflict with, the difficult austerities of
Jain virtue; and for the devout wife, who develops an integrated praxis that
CONCLUSION 173
simultaneously works toward her liberation and toward her marital well-being.
A woman’s Jain piety can simultaneously reduce karma, gain merit, and protect
the well-being and status of her family, and it is the satı̄’s multivalent heroic
virtues that allow her this capability of resolving a tension basic to Jain
doctrines of virtue.
The choice to be a wife arises out of these tensions, as they are explored
and negotiated by unmarried women, who almost always choose to channel
the benefits of those rituals toward a good marriage. Throughout the Jain satı̄
narrative literature, Jain piety is prescribed to prevent or fix the kinds of
problems women face in their marriages. Jain women use karma reduction
to protect themselves and thereby their husbands in the Rohinı̄ fast, and
˙
they use the religiomagic practices associated with the siddhacakra yantra to
make happy marriages, which in turn allow one to be more religious. The
inevitable coda of renunciation or rebirth as a future Jina reminds us that these
same practices ultimately lead to the realization of Jain perfection, and that
wifehood is no bar to liberation. The integration of these ideologies in satı̄
narratives and rituals creates a coherent—though by no means unified or
simple—discourse of Jain wifehood.
Given this coherence, what are the implications for other studies of
religious women in South Asia, in other traditions in which there are strong
traditions of nunhood, or in any context where competing ideologies shape the
discourse of womanhood? By moving away from the focus on resistance to
hegemonic discourses, we can begin to examine how women inhabit spaces
within hegemonic discourse. Jain women inhabit many roles: daughter,
sister, friend, wife, nun, daughter-in-law, mother, mother-in-law, ritual expert,
virtuosa faster, pious devotee. For some women, the transition between iden-
tities was difficult, but most moved between these roles with surprising facility,
considering the complexity of these conflicting ideological realms (Raheja and
Gold 1994).2 Once one is established in a role, the transitions are simpler,
because each of the states is stabilized. In periods of instability of roles, such as
the time leading up to marriage, periods of marital unhappiness, or periods of
crisis in one’s husband’s health, women use religion to make sense of and
guide their transitions through them. Pintchman (2006) suggests that when
one Hindu woman’s religious practices failed to protect her and to guide
her through her personal tragedy, she attempted to integrate the discourse of
devotionalism with the ideology of karmic fate; this integration was less
coherent, perhaps, because of the traumatic and tragic nature of that woman’s
experience and because karma theory is less clearly articulated in the stories
that woman told religiously. Writing about Catholic women’s devotion to
St. Jude, Orsi (1996, 40–78) illuminates links between the devotion to the
174 HEROIC WIVES
saint of “Hopeless Causes” and the instability of immigrant women’s identities

in the postwar period. Similarly, Jain women use satı̄ narratives and the rituals
associated with them to draw blueprints to guide them into and through their
married lives.
The heroism of religious wives is often unwritten. It is a profoundly
difficult process to discipline oneself in the delicate balance of the ideologies
that impinge on Jain wives. How do women in other traditions balance the
ideologies that enjoin them to uphold apparently contradictory virtues? I would
argue that we can only answer this question by exploring the ways that women
inhabit the norms of their tradition. Women do not inhabit these norms
accidentally and automatically; their compliance is a discipline, one in which
they engage deeply in spite of the known challenges. In her discussion about
Muslim women’s piety in Egypt, Mahmood (2005, 29) writes: “Although we
have come to associate docility with the abandonment of agency, the term
literally implies the malleability required of someone in order for her to be
instructed in a particular skill or knowledge—a meaning that carries less a
sense of passivity than one of struggle, effort, exertion, and achievement.”
Similar to other disciplines, this docility requires self-reflection, personal
vigilance, and an ongoing engagement with the discourse which produces it.
The integration of the many benefits of particular Jain worship and the focus
on general piety allow women a space in which to perform their wifehood. For
example, Jain ritual performances provide a space (physically, socially, and
emotionally) for the cultivation of a woman’s selfhood (Reynell 2006). The
renunciation imperative in Jainism is, then, tempered with the ritual possibi-
lities of achieving Jain selfhood within the chosen identity of wife.
The Joys of Jain Wifehood
In my fifteen years of research, I found that Jain women took great pleasure
in the joys of wifehood, in spite of occasional frustration with the role of
daughter-in-law. (We must take care to not conflate the two, for daughter-in-
law has its discourse of hard work and obedience, in contrast to the wife’s
auspiciousness, devotion, and intimacy.) The expression of this pleasure and
joy was the emotional center of the annual recitation (called Nemi Vacan) of the
Nemanāthno Saloko. Near sunset on Śrāvan bright fifth, most of the married
˙
women (and some widows and soon-to-be married young women) in the
Shivajinagar congregation made their way to the temple’s mendicant hostel
to participate in this recitation. This recitation was performed in conjunction
with the evening confession and was the most widely attended annual event
CONCLUSION 175
outside of those associated with the festival of Paryusan and the temple
˙ ˙
anniversary.3 The recitation tells the story of Nemi and Rājul’s engagement,
Nemi’s rejection of Rājul, and Rājul’s renunciation. At first glance it appears an
unlikely candidate for the celebration of wifehood and marriage, because it
so unambiguously would appear to be a celebration of renunciation. It is,
however, closely linked to a number of rituals believed to bless and protect
marriages. Several women told me that this text was recited by the married
women of their natal families (and, in two cases, the married women of their
husband’s families alongside their natal family) at their weddings during the
last ritual before the new bride leaves with her husband’s family; the purpose
was to bless the wedding and create an auspicious time for the transfer of
a young woman from one house to another, solidifying her identity transforma-
tion. Many women told me that simply hearing the recitation will bless a
woman’s marital happiness. Likewise, the Saubhāgya Pañcamı̄ fast, whose
most significant day of fasting coincides with this recitation, is seen as a
powerful fast not only for the long life of a husband but also for a happy
marriage.4 This story and ritual, then, amplify the conjunction of wifehood
and renunciation like no other: in this renunciation story, recited in the context
of the rite of confession and expiation on a day of fasting, one encounters a long
and detailed enumeration of the joys of married life. It is not a stretch, in fact, to
say that these joys are central to the recitation, since the joys of married life take
up forty-eight verses (13–60) out of the text’s eighty-two, whereas Nemi’s and
Rājul’s renunciations combined (including Rājul’s lament) take up only sixteen
verses (61–76).5 In 1994, when I asked women if the contrast in the story
between the glories of renunciation and the joys of wifehood struck them as
unusual, they did not even understand the question as such. Their puzzled
incomprehension at my own puzzlement is, in fact, what ultimately led
me into this research. It is only now that I understand how the Nemanāthno
Saloko and its recitation and reception supports two centers: wifehood and
renunciation.
The Nemanāthno Saloko sets the story of Nemi and Rājul in a thoroughly
imagined domestic context with speeches by Nemi’s sisters-in-law, Rukamanı̄
˙
and Satyabhāmā, describing the various tasks that a wife is expected to com-
plete.6 These speeches, which take up eleven verses of the poem, are part of an
ongoing attempt, begun by their husband, Krsna, to convince Nemi to marry.
_˙ ˙
Krsna’s speech about how he is wasting his youth has just failed; Rukamanı̄
_ ˙ ˙ ˙
then invokes the day-to-day virtues of married life. It is a model of the good
behavior of devoted wives, but it also suggests the centrality of wives to the
maintenance of familial well-being and the practice of Jainism. Nemi is
ultimately charmed and convinced to marry by the description of wifely acts
176 HEROIC WIVES
and the importance of having someone to perform them, and agrees to marry.
Rukamanı̄ asks:
˙
Without a wife, all is sorrow, who will keep the twelve restraints?7
Without having fed each other [gotten married] (parn.yā), how can
you go on?
Who will be in your house to meet people and greet them
gracefully?
Who will light the stove and who will filter the water?
Who will use the rolling pin and board to make food?
Who will serve as the threshold of birth and prevent your
childlessness?
Who will light the lamp wicks? . . .
Your pans will never gleam, who will lay out the bedding for you at
night?
In the morning, who will feed you breads (khākhrā) and who will
bring the gods their lamps in the evening?
To whom will you tell your heart’s secrets? That woman will be your
wife.
You will grow old together, all the nations will celebrate.
Nemanāthno Saloko 21–25
Then, his other sister-in-law, Satyabhāmā continues:
Without the wedding feast whom can you call your own?
She will cover herself with the veil and circle the fire with you with
jingling anklets.
With whom will you talk about your happiness and sorrow?
For your own sake, marry this queen, I will not bring you your
bathwater forever.
Without a wedding feast, how can you have happiness?
Who will sing auspicious songs in your house?
Nemanāthno Saloko 27–29
At the moment when Nemi accepts the idea of marriage, though the women
participating in the recitation know he will ultimately reject Rājul, all is
anticipated happiness. Women at the recitations that I observed in
1994, 2000, 2001, 2006, and 2008 laughed and smiled at these descriptions
of their own daily lives, and the sheer pleasure of the text made them
recite together with a degree of enthusiasm and attention rarely found
in Jain recitations, where rapid recitation is the norm. In a later section—
foreshadowed by Satyabhāmā’s description of Nemi’s future wife’s body—the
CONCLUSION 177
text lists all the jewelry and clothing his wife should be given as her pallu. For
example: “A silk veil and a gharchola sari, she’ll need a yellow Patola sari, and
those shimmering veils that look so lovely, she’ll want to wear them for Daśera
and Divālı̄” (Nemanāthno Saloko 38). The gifts from a husband to a wife are the
gifts of allurement and beauty (not merely gifts of economic exchange), which
mark the future intimacy between Nemi and his wife. The ornaments listed are
the same ones that the women reciting cherish in their own property. Women
were quick to notice new jewelry or saris worn by others in the congregation,
and always commented on the beauty of a new item; the owner would name its
source, often blushing if it came from her husband. In 1994, as the recitation
named a particular kind of earrings, many turned to look at a young wife who
just that day was wearing that very kind—a gift, she had told her friends before
the recitation, from her husband. Though clothing and jewelry are certainly
markers of familial prestige, they are just as clearly special marks of affection
and intimacy between the giver and herself.
Nemi’s response—“Having heard all of this, Nemi smiled and the words of
his sisters-in-law stayed in his heart” (Nemanāthno Saloko 42)—illustrates
how their appeals populate his mind with life in a household: domesticity,
tenderness, physical and emotional intimacy. Nemi’s resistance anticipates
his renunciation, but his change of heart and agreement to marry makes very
real that which he renounces—he is not renouncing an abstraction, but a
concretely evoked and alluring domestic scene. Since everyone reciting and
listening to the Nemanāthno Saloko knows he will renounce each one of these
markers of domestic bliss, the particularity of the list functions to heighten the
heroic nature of Nemi’s renunciation of such joys. However, as in the mutually
reinforcing dynamic of renunciation and wifehood generally, his impending
renunciation also functions to heighten the pleasures of wifehood. In 2006
one married woman pointedly told me that even Nemi—that is, even one
who renounced it all—recognized the importance of a wife’s contributions to a
happy home.
Though women rarely talk about their sexual, or even emotional, intimacy
with their husbands in front of elder female relatives or in any public setting,
there were ways of displaying that intimacy through dress, gesture, and
oblique conversation. On two occasions I observed a game (familiar to all
attending) in which a wife does an imitation of her husband for the crowd
of onlookers. In both cases it was played in large groups of women from two
different extended families. The familiarity with this game was clear: no
instructions were given (just the “name” of the game: do his work/act like
him teonu kām karo), and many women had a “set piece” imitation of their
husband ready to hand. This set piece may have arisen in prior performances;
178 HEROIC WIVES
or, perhaps, the women performed a sequence of their husbands’ actions,

which form a part of their intimate landscape. The degree to which a woman
could invoke the image of her husband was rewarded with laughter, cheering,
and exuberant joking and hand-slapping. Older women had the distinct advan-
tage, having spent years observing their husbands in action, and some of the
most evocative and popular imitations by these women were of husbands in
private moments (asking his wife to come sit with him or needing her help
getting dressed). When it was my turn, I was at a loss, but within moments the
women were calling out suggestions to me; the suggestion that everyone
cheered was that I perform the voice of my husband when he called up to
our flat from downstairs. Some of the women knew that I found my husband’s
voice to be especially pleasing: at the time it touched me that they chose such
an image. As I watched the rest of the game (and in the second time I played it),
I saw these wives reproducing aspects of their husbands that they loved
intimately and deeply: one woman messed up her hair and imitated her
husband waking in the morning, and another mimed the way her husband
happily returns from work. This game, like other celebrations of wifehood,
provided an opportunity for women to revel in the joys of wifehood and its
assumed intimacy, sexuality, and pleasure.
This pleasure is an expected and required—for the happy continuity of the
male lineage—part of marriage. One devotional song I heard on several occa-
sions and have here transcribed from my recordings at the 2006 Rājul song
contest speaks of Rājul’s desire for Nemi. Rājul speaks:
O, sisters, sing songs, Nemijı̄ is gorgeous!

Bang the drum, play the shenai, everyone sing the songs!
Sing wedding songs, my heart is flooded with the nine oceans.
O, brothers, go see that the wedding canopy is tied up properly.
Nemkumār’s people have come, the perfume of roses floats in
the air.
O, sisters, I’m in love, Nem has come, he has come looking so
lovely!
Rājul’s girlfriends sing together laughingly: “He is a wrestler!”
It’s happened in my heart, the secret river of love’s joy.
O, sing songs to celebrate the wedding!
This song was sung with pleasure, not with anticipatory sorrow of his impending
renunciation; married women, unlike the unmarried women who performed
Rājul’s laments (in chapter 6), chose to portray Rājul’s happiness. Knowing that
CONCLUSION 179
Rājul’s happiness is fleeting, this choice may reflect the knowledge that Jain
women have about the potential transience of their joys. They capture what, in
the minds of those who have chosen wifehood over renunciation, is Rājul’s
moment of greatest happiness. This may be wish fulfillment; but the desires
behind the wish are real, and so too are the pleasures of its expression.
Notes
CHAPTER 1
_
1. I found this text originally in Sudhāras Stavan Sangrah. The Sol
_
Satı̄no Chand was written by Udayratna sometime between 1692 and 1743.
The full text of this hymn, its translation, and history are given in Kelting
(2006d).
2. Though the work of some Indian feminists have made the term satı̄
more complex, many feminists inherit the colonial and Orientalist usage. The
conflation of satı̄ with Hindu widow immolation obscures its intricacy. For
example, not all satı̄s die with their husbands, nor are they all widows, and
finally not all satı̄s are Hindu. There is some evidence, however, of Jain women
immolating themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre, which is discussed
later in this chapter and in chapter 5.
3. This census figure is problematic as a list of all Jains, because many
Jains do not distinguish themselves from Hindus in this communal way.
Flügel (2006, 313–314 and 367–368 nn. 11–18) discusses the challenge of
determining Jain lay populations and sectarian identities.
4. On Jain castes, see Babb (2004); Banks (1992, 48–74, 153–159); Cort
(2001b, 57–60; 2004). I have observed that in contexts in which Gujarati Jains
are using self-deprecating humor among themselves, they occasionally refer
to themselves as Baniyās to indicate the negative implications of their identity
or, perhaps more subtly, their negative views on Marwari Jains. Babb (2004,
36) points out that Rajasthani merchant castes sometimes reject the term
Baniyā, preferring the term Mahājan (great person).
5. See Balbir 1993; Cort 2001b, 122–127; and Laidlaw 1995, 195–215 for
discussions of the role of the āvaśyaka as an organizing principle of Jain
religious practice.
182 NOTES TO PAGES 5–7
6. There are a few texts claimed by both Śvetāmbar and Digambar Jains—
_
including Umāsvātı̄’s Tattvārtha Sūtra and Mānatunga’s Bhaktāmar Stotra—but beyond
the similarities in the basic cosmologies and ontologies, these two sects are divided.
7. It is difficult to estimate the numbers of Jain laity associated with any of the Jain
lineages, but the mendicant lineage statistics as reported in 1996 for Śvetāmbar and
Digambar lineages (Flügel 2006) support this claim. The mendicant lineages give
Śvetāmbar (10,350) divided into Mūrtipūjak (6,373–1,450 monks and 4,923 nuns),
Sthānakavāsı̄ (3,223–533 monks and 2,690 nuns), Terāpanthı̄ (754–169 monks and 584
nuns), and Digambar (539–326 monks and 213 nuns). The further subdivisions of the
Mūrtipūjak are relevant for this study, including: Tapā Gacch (5,568–1,278 monks and
4,821 nuns), Vimala Gacch (42–19 monks and 23 nuns), Añcala Gacch (252–39 monks
and 213 nuns), Khartar Gacch (224–19 monks and 205 nuns), Tristuti Gacch (175–47
monks and 128 nuns), Pārśvacandra Gacch (72–8 monks and 64 nuns), and others
(40–40 monks and no nuns).
8. See the publications of Peter Flügel and Anne Vallely for descriptions and
analyses of Terāpanthı̄ Jainism.
9. In the sense of having a separate identity from other Jain mendicant lineages,
the Tapā Gacch scholar-monks see the Tapā Gacch as the mainstream Śvetāmbar
monastic lineage. Tapā Gacch mendicants see themselves–for some compelling rea-
sons–as being in the direct lineage of Sudharman, a disciple of the Jina Mahāvı̄r. The
epithet Tapā (ascetic) was granted to Jagaccandrasūri (circa 1228) in recognition of his
austerities and was later applied to the monastic lineage of which he was the leader,
eventually replacing the former name, the Vata Gacch. The history of the Tapā Gacch
_
tells us much about the development of Jainism in the medieval period, which sets the
stage for dominance of the Tapā Gacch in the contemporary period. For an excellent
history of this mendicant lineage, see Dundas (2007).
10. For more about Jain karma theory, see the work of Kristi Wiley, in particular
her dissertation “Aghātiyā Karmas” (2000). See also Jerome Bauer, “Karma and Control:
The Prodigious and the Auspicious in Śvetāmbara Jaina Canonical Mythology,” Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1998; Helmuth von Glassnapp, Doctrine of
Karman in Jain Philosophy, translated by G. Barry (Varanasi: P. V. Institute, 1991);
W. J. Johnson, Harmless Souls: Karmic Bondage and Religious Change in Early Jainism with
Special Reference to Umāsvāti and Kundakunda (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995);
and, for briefer treatments, see Dundas (2002, 93–110) and Folkert (1993, 7–10, 115–121,
318–337).
11. T. N. Madan (1987) provides a corrective to the scholarship on Hinduism, which
privileges liberation-directed models of religiosity over the domestic models of well-
being. This challenge has inspired a number of studies on domestic Hinduism and,
most significantly, John Cort’s work (2001b) on well-being.
12. Jains believe that in this part of the cycle of time, avasarpinı̄, liberation is not
˙
possible. See Dundas (2002, 20–21).
13. This is a Śvetāmbar narrative. Digambar Jains assert that Mallināth is male and
that female bodies cannot achieve enlightenment. See Jaini (1991) for an extensive
examination of the Śvetāmbar and Digambar debates over women’s spiritual liberation.
NOTES TO PAGES 7–12 183
14. The other story is that of Sthūlibhadra, who resists the temptation of the
courtesan with whom he is forced to live as a test. Other stories of celibacy focus on
women who resist the sexual aggression or temptations offered by men. See Fohr
(2001) for an extended discussion on the discourse of celibacy among Jain nuns.
15. Satı̄ stories make up approximate half of the text of the Bharateśvar Bāhubalı̄
Vrttih, a narrative collection that is recommended as part of the proper curriculum for
_ _
monks (Cort 2001a). Sermon collections, such as Dharmadāsagani’s Upadeśamālā and
˙
Ācārya Vijayalaksmı̄sūri’s Upadeśaprasāda, or Virāt’s contemporary commentary on
˙ _
Vijayalaksmı̄sūri’s work, Upadeśaprasād Mahāgranth, are fruitful places for seeing the
˙
ethical and religious contexts in which monks place these narratives.
16. There are occasional siddhas who did not renounce (for example, Marudevı̄,
the mother of Ādināth), but they are rarely venerated.
17. Sūri is a title that means “learned man” and that indicates that the monk has
been ordained an ācārya or leader of a group or sect of Jain mendicants.
18. Paruysan begins on twelfth/thirteenth day of the dark fortnight of Śrāvan and
˙ ˙
ends on the fourth/fifth day of the bright half of Bhādarvā. The fifth day is marked with
the celebration of Mahāvı̄r’s birth, and the last day, Samvatsarı̄, is the day of the annual
rite of confession and expiation. The Tapā Gacch begin_ the festival on Śrāvan dark
twelfth while other Śvetāmbar Jains begin on Śrāvan dark thirteenth. See Banks (1991
and 1992, 176–184); Cort (2001b, 147–162); Folkert (1993, 189–211); and Laidlaw (1995,
275–286) for descriptions of this festival.
19. There are two Olı̄ festivals: Āso bright seventh to fifteenth and Caitra bright
_
seventh to fifteenth. The Āso Olı̄ is considered more important, and more Jains
_
participate in the austerities and celebrations then. Chapter 4 will describe and analyze
this festival. See Banks (1992, 91–94); Cort (2001b, 162–163); Kelting (2001b, 44–47);
Laidlaw (1995, 221–229); and Reynell (1985a, 127–130) for other descriptions of this
festival.
20. The Dı̄vālı̄ cluster begins with the five days of Dı̄vālı̄: (1) Āso dark thirteenth:
Dhan Teras, on which day Jains worship wealth as a form of the goddess Laksmı̄; (2) Āso
˙
dark fourteenth: Kālı̄ Caudas, which is a day of inauspiciousness on which some Jains
perform worship to the tantric deity Ghantākarn Mahāvı̄r; (3) the new moon day:
˙_ ˙
marked with the worship of Laksmı̄ as Śāradā and of familial account books for well-
˙
being; it is also the day on which Mahāvı̄r attained liberation; (4) Kārtak bright first: the
first day of the new year. The day is started with fireworks and auspicious prayers
_
(mangalik); and (5) Kārtak bright second: Bhāı̄ Bı̄j, on which married sisters feed and
bless their brothers. The Dı̄vālı̄ cluster continues until Kārtak bright fifth: Jñān
Pañcamı̄, when Jains worship knowledge. See Cort (2001b, 164–175) and Laidlaw
(1995, 364–387) for descriptions of this festival cluster.
21. Cort (2004, 94–98) reports a similar process among Jains in Gujarat
(including movement toward Mumbai).
22. There are two other major identity themes in the Jain satı̄ narrative genre:
nunhood and motherhood. Fohr (2001) discusses the role of satı̄ narratives in the
discourse of nunhood. The narratives of motherhood are the focus of my next major
research project.
23. See Cort (2001b and 2002) for critiques of the assumption that Jain mendi-
cants are hostile to merit-making and devotional activities. Nor did scholar monks see
these activities as anathema to the Jain life or the path toward liberation. Though the
lives of mendicants center around liberation-directed Jainism, the monks and nuns
recognize that the concerns of lay Jains are legitimate ones. There are also some
unsigned contemporary hymns and songs, whose authors could be monks, nuns, or lay
people, though they are unlikely to be prominent monks, who would most likely use a
signature line in their work. In the twentieth century, there seems to be an increase in
anonymous devotional texts. Digambar Jains have also seen a rise in texts without the
signature line (John Cort, personal correspondence).
24. Though occasionally people spoke of a ritual formula for a Jain wedding, no
one in Pune seems to have ever actually used this wedding as a model. North Indian
Digambar Jains have developed a Jain wedding, and it is used in Jaipur; the Jain
wedding is less expensive than the Hindu, which may be why it has been chosen–
especially by poorer Jain families (John Cort, personal communication). In Pune, poorer
families have used group weddings to save money, but the rites of these weddings
appear to be a slightly Jainized version of the Hindu wedding. Banks (1992, 78 n. 3)
confirms the use of Hindu wedding rites by Jains. In my observation, Jain weddings
have only a few significant differences from Hindu weddings among caste/class
cohorts: (1) the use of Jain mantras and auspicious texts; (2) the omission of the rites of
bathing the bride in the remnants of the groom’s prewedding bath (part of the pithi cola
or haldı̄); (3) the omission of the rite of applying vermilion to the part of the bride’s hair
(sindūr dān); and, (4) differing emphases on what constitutes the moment of marriage.
25. See the following: Bennett 1983; Dhruvarajan 1989; Harlan 1992 and 1995a;
Leslie 1989; McDaniel 2003; McGee 1987; Menski 1991; Menzies 2004; Minturn 1993;
Reynolds 1980.
26. Ahearn (2001, 24) notes that this practice is diminishing.
27. The importance of producing legitimate heirs and absolute faithfulness to the
husband is certainly present far beyond the region of South Asia, but pativratā is
associated with characteristic behaviors and practices (such as ghūngha_ t, fasting for
_
one’s husband’s health, dying with one’s husband).
28. There are also tensions between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law or
among daughters-in-law. These tensions are often blamed for the division of joint
families into smaller units. It is unclear to what extent these tensions are actually the
cause of divisions, or to what extent these tensions are a manifestation of the tensions
between brothers or between sons and their parents, or to what extent tensions between
brothers are blamed on their wives in order to maintain the discourse of brotherly
solidarity. In all cases, the trope of affinal women who disrupt the household is
reiterated by men and women alike when describing familial conflict.
29. Fohr (2001) found that chastity/celibacy tests were the primary motif in the
satı̄ narratives as told by the Jain nuns with whom she conducted her research. The
motif of celibacy is certainly important for Jain satı̄ narratives, and is part of the
narrative tradition as it is transmitted to and by Jain laywomen; however, for Jain
laywomen who share with Hindu women in the discourse of pativratā and satı̄s, chastity
becomes more central than celibacy. This prioritizing is clear in the repertoire choices
and the variations within narrative retellings of Jain laywomen versus those of Jain nuns
found in Fohr (2001) and Vallely (2002).
30. Widows attended weddings, however, and even were present at the joining of
the hands (haste milāp) of daughters. In fact, I observed that widows attended all social
and religious functions, though they often sat in another room during particularly
auspicious rites associated with daughters-in-law.
31. In particular, those rituals in which the sponsors identify with Indra and
Indrānı̄ or Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundari. However, if there is a married couple performing
˙
the ritual, there is no bar to a widow or any other person from joining in with them.
These rituals will be discussed later, in chapter 4.
32. See Dhruvarajan 1989, 91–97; Minturn 1993, 221–245; Wadley 1995, 99–115.
The experience of Hindu widows in some communities, especially those who permit
widow remarriage or the ownership of property by widows, is considerably less bleak
than that of upper-caste Hindu women (Chowdhry 1994, 74–120, 356–372; Dhruvajan
1989, 95–96).
33. I did hear talk about one family whose aged widowed matriarch did not often
get brought to temple events; however, when I visited her unannounced she was dressed
in freshly cleaned and pressed clothing and was having a normal, albeit piously plain,
Jain meal. The fact that there was talk about how she was treated indicated both the
potential for abuse and the communal surveillance over the treatment of widows.
34. See Kelting (2003) and (2006d, 191). The one significant exception to this rule
is the mothers of the Jinas, who are understood to be virtuous but who are never referred
to as satı̄s (Kelting 2003a, 233–237). Likewise, with the exception of the use of the term
mahāsatı̄ for Śvetāmbar Sthānakavāsı̄ nuns, no one ever used this term to refer to a
living person or any person known outside of Jain narrative literature.
35. There were some Jains–mostly laymen–who spoke of satı̄mātā veneration and
the rite of dying with one’s husband as backward. They did this out of both moral
conviction–these were often some of the more religious Jain laymen–and out of a sense
of social superiority as modern, urban, educated middle- and upper-middle-class
Indians (though by no means secularists).
36. The term sallekhanā is used by Digambar Jains. The vow to fast to death is an
ideal death and recognized as admirable for those Jains who, for reasons ranging from
debilitating illness or impending death, are unable to fulfill their Jain practices
(Laidlaw 2005, 186). This “good death” simultaneously reclaims the agency of the vow
taker while also demonstrating the individual’s movement away from passion and
activity. Laidlaw further juxtaposes this movement away from passion in the Jain
performance of the vow to fast to death with the passionate desire to die with one’s
husband attributed to the Hindu satı̄mātā (Laidlaw 2005, 193). For a discussion of
fasting to death and conflicting positions and discourses within Jainism, see Vallely
(2002, 119–139).
37. Leslie (1991, 46) used the variations in transliteration in order to maintain a
distinction between the discourse of “suttee” among British and Indian colonial writers
and “satı̄” discourse among Hindus who venerate these women.
38. If a woman does not hear of her husband’s death until after his cremation, a
satı̄ may choose be cremated in a separate pyre with an object representing her
husband, and this rite is called “going after” (anugamana) or “dying after” (anumaran.a).
39. Nandita Goswami’s (2003) Ph.D. dissertation gives an extensive analysis of the
Roop Kanwar satı̄ death as a site for examining notions of subjectivity.
40. Only Savitrı̄’s husband dies before her, and she successfully brings him back to
life. One could read the Savitrı̄ story as a symbolic satı̄ death–she follows him into
death–and a recommendation to do so, since by doing so she is able to save his life;
however, this reading requires one to read her husband’s return to life metaphorically,
and when the story was told to me, he was always described as literally returning from
the dead.
41. See Courtright (1995, 190–202), Harlan (1992, 172–179), and Weinberger-
Thomas 1999, 28–32. There are some interesting cases in which a satı̄mātā’s death was
linked not to her husband’s death but to the death of some other relative: son, nephew,
brother, father-in-law (Weinberger-Thomas 2000, 29). These are not unheard of, but
the discourse of satı̄s still centers around their links to pativratā and the usual model of
dedication to their husbands.
42. The best-known of the living satı̄mātās was Bālā Satı̄mātā, who was an object of
worship both in life and after her death (some forty-three years after her second failed
satı̄ death) and whose life is immortalized by her devotees; see Bālā Satı̄ Mātā Lı̄lāmrt
_ _
(1995).
43. Figueira (1994) is an excellent analysis of European representations of the satı̄
in romantic literature.
44. As Indian feminist activists, they also created an analysis of political responses
(both pro- and anti-satı̄) and suggest a set of actions intended to prevent future satı̄s
(Kishwar and Vanita 1999).
45. The most sophisticated argument in support of the modernity versus tradition
model is put forth by Ashis Nandy (1994), but this model for understanding satı̄
discourse is convincingly challenged by Veena Oldenburg (1994a).
46. In this case, she focuses on Marwari merchants, in particular the Agarwals
who venerate Rānı̄ Satı̄, but this is the same caste group to which Marwari Jains belong.
˙
See Babb (2004) for an excellent evaluation of the interwoven caste narrative traditions
of these three groups.
47. See Hardgrove (2004, 251, 271–272), Harlan (1992, 46–48), Noble and
Sankhyan (1994, 364–370), and Weinberger-Thomas (2000, 116).
48. Even though there is inscriptional evidence in Bikaner that some Jain women
have died as satı̄s on their husbands’ funeral pyres (Somani 1982, 78–80), there is
no contemporary evidence of their worship as satı̄mātās (Anastasia Norton-Piliavski,
personal correspondence).
49. See, for example, Erndl (1993), Gold (1995a and 2000), Hancock (1999),
Minturn (1993), Pearson (1996), and Raheja and Gold (1994).
50. This is more than just a statement of normative values because, of course,
no vows may be taken without the express permission of a senior member (usually
mother-in-law and/or husband) of the affinal family. Since most long vows prevent a
woman from performing housework, and they all require a vow of celibacy for the
duration of the vow, young wives are discouraged from taking vows that will prevent
them from fulfilling what are believed to be their marital duties.
51. Jains have a fairly nuanced understanding of links between health, nutrition,
and allopathic medicine due to the community’s relatively high level of education and
the widespread presence of medical professionals within the community. For example,
when one man had a mild heart attack after years of high blood pressure, the general
consensus was that he himself ignored the doctor’s advice about lowering his salt
intake. His wife had performed many fasts to promote marital well-being. In the many
conversations about what should be done about this man’s health, no one suggested that
his wife had failed to protect him ritually or nutritionally. When I suggested that
someone should keep him from salting his food, other women dismissed this as
impossible because he liked salt and a wife cannot deny favorite foods to her husband.
Even when women are acting on doctor’s medical advice (particularly concerning
nutrition–low salt, low fat, no sugar, etc.), they find it hard to deny these high-status
ingredients (salt, ghee, sugar) from their husbands, because of both the social pressure
to give the “best food” to their husband and also their own husband’s desire to eat these
foods. It is the husband’s desires for unhealthy foods, not his wife’s willingness to
indulge this desire, that was faulted.
52. Jains believe that all living beings have souls. Bhavya souls are those souls that
are capable of attaining enlightenment. Jains also recognize the further constrained
capacity of insects or plants to act. Further, Jain karma theory asserts that not all souls
are capable of enlightenment. Abhavya souls are eternally incapable of achieving
enlightenment because they are incapable of removing their mohanı̄ya karma and
attaining the correct view (samyak darśan) that is necessary for acting in accordance with
Jain teachings. However limited these souls may be in terms of enlightenment, they are
still capable of agential choice and may be born in any of the four states of existence. On
the other hand, nigoda are one-sensed beings. Nitya-nigodas house souls, which have
always been nigodas and therefore have almost no karmic history. It is unclear why
nigoda souls emerge out of this state into higher births, but it is not because they acted
in accordance with Jain teachings, for which one must have five senses. The context of
nigoda souls is the only one in which Jain constructs of universal agency are seriously
challenged. See Jaini (1977, 1980, and 2003) for extensive discussions about notions of
bhavya and abhavya souls and nigodas. Thanks to Kristi Wiley for clarifying Jain
concepts of agency for me.
53. My thinking on selfhood here is indebted to Reynell’s careful analysis (2006) of
Jain personhood and selfhood.
CHAPTER 2
1. Some Jain laywomen perform protective rites that they themselves understood
to be Hindu. I knew a few women who worshiped Ganapatı̄, the plant-goddess Tulsı̄,
˙
and the powerful Śaiva goddess Āmbājı̄, and still more who routinely visited Vaisnāv
˙˙
goddess temples (especially Mahālaksmı̄) for blessings related to their saubhāgya. Jain
˙
laywomen also relied on practices they shared with other South Asian communities
related to lineage goddesses and the evil eye to further protect those whose health and
welfare are under their purview. These strategies did not rest well within Jain normative
discourse, because these practices rely on either merit transfer or the blessings of
Hindu, rather than Jain, divinities. Once I observed this pointedly expressed; a Jain
woman offered to bless two Jain women with kunku _ m when they rose to leave her
house, but both women refused the kunku _ m because_ it had been blessed by the
_
Śaiva goddess Āmbājı̄.
2. I borrow the language of maintenance rites from Mary McGee (1987, 73–74).
3. This telling is based on oral tellings and augmented with details such as names
from the popular written version in Mahāsatı̄, Vol. 1, no date, 1–20.
4. The scholarship that describes Hindu women performing rituals on behalf of
their husbands is extensive. For studies of saubhāgya fasts, see, for example, McDaniel
(2003), McGee (1987 and 1991), Menzies (2004), Narayan (1997), Reynolds (1980), and
Tewari (1991). For rituals in addition to fasting, see Hancock (1999), Harlan (1992),
and Leslie (1989). Scholars have increasingly complexified what it might mean for a
woman to act to protect her husband in the greater context of their ritual acts, especially
those acts which benefit the woman more directly; see Gold (1995b), Minturn (1993),
Pearson (1996), and Pintchman (2005, 2007).
5. Jains understand the present era to be part of the regressive cycle of time,
avasarpinı̄, in which moksa is not possible from the earth.
˙ ˙
6. In this way, the intention of doing is constructed as an act–thinking–rather
than a state of mind. According to common understandings of Jain karma, the maxi-
mum karma binds when one does an act because one thinks of, speaks of, and then does
an act. Of course, these models of karma binding work for both merit (pun.ya) and
demerit (pāp), and thus one should strive to do good acts and to avoid any engagement
with bad acts. Finally, the location of one’s birth (earth, hell, heaven, etc.) and the length
of one’s life are determined at a particular point in one’s past life and cannot be
altered by the acts of others (Wiley 2003). Wiley did find two examples in which the
length of the next birth in hell was modified, but these proved to be exceptions from
the rule of āyus karma, and one was in a Digambar text (Wiley 2003, 350–351).
Śvetāmbar texts offered less flexibility in this matter.
_ Sūtra (1.1.1.5) uses this paradigm to categorize ways of binding
7. The Ācārānga
demerit. The model is widely understood in Jain communities and reproduced in
mendicant sermons both for demerit and merit.
8. The same holds true in reverse. The greatest amount of demerit is bound by
doing something bad oneself, and the least from appreciating someone’s bad act.
9. The effects of one’s merit on others was explained to Reynell (1985a, 126–127)
as being like the spreading scent of incense, which extends beyond the person who
lights it. Thus Reynell’s informant argues for the importance of appreciation of good
acts as a source of merit.
10. Cort (2003, 142) draws the reader’s attention to the fact that the Śrı̄pāl and
_
Maynāsundarı̄ story, which serves as a charter for the Navpad Olı̄ fast, centers around
˙ _
the merit transfer of a wife’s merit from performing the Navpad Olı̄ fast to her living
_
husband. This most popular version of the Śrı̄pāl story, the Śrı̄pāl Rājāno Rās, was
_ _
written by two of the leading monks of the Tapā Gacch, including the scholar monk
Yaśovijayjı̄, reminding us that this is not an obscure or unorthodox text.
11. The closing rites do not require one to be in special pūjā clothes, which is
one of the main reasons given to me for why men were willing to come perform this
ritual. See Kelting (2001b, 126–130) for a discussion of pūjā clothes.
12. In an interesting twist, Jain merchants in Pune were often well aware of the
many Hindu holidays and fast dates for which they must have the proper supplies on
display, but were unclear about the timings of Jain holidays beyond the very largest
of festivals.
13. Reynell (1985a, 139) writes that because the merit and sin of the husband can
have a financial and social impact on the whole family, a woman’s merit can offset the
sin of her husband. This is not necessarily by decreasing the husband’s sin, but
rather by increasing the family’s merit. This could take the form of merit transfer, but it
is not necessary for a woman to transfer her merit in order to improve the lot of her
family; a woman can utilize her own merit to improve her own conditions, which would
ultimately improve the conditions of anyone whose well-being is linked to hers.
14. Among the Terāpanthı̄ Jains, teaching Jainism is the only truly compassionate
act (Vallely 2002, 85). Laidlaw (1995, 78) reports a similar view among Khartar Gacch
Jains in Jaipur. I have never heard that view espoused among lay Jains in Pune, though
I have heard occasional monks propose it.
15. In 2008, a monk in residence in Pune sponsored an exam contest on Jain
knowledge in which there was the question: “Who is a person’s most important guru?”
and the correct answer was “Mā” (one’s own mother), suggesting that the idea of mother
as a key teacher is normative and valued.
16. Several women assured me that they never asked guardian deities for anything
for themselves, but only asked for blessings for others, indicating their selflessness.
This reads as a reversal of the self-focused understanding of karma-based practices.
17. The popularity of these deities has overridden the traditional links of particular
deities with particular Jinas. For example, Padmāvatı̄ is traditionally linked to temples in
which Pārśvanāth is the main deity, but she is now so popular that she is often installed
in temples with other Jinas as the central deity. In Shivajinagar, Padmāvatı̄ and Nākoda
_
Bherujı̄ (a ks.etrapāl, not a yaks.a) are installed as guardians along with Ghantākarn
˙_ ˙
Mahāvı̄r and Mānibhadra in side niches, even though the central image is Ajitnāth.
˙
There are also distinctions between the yaks.ı̄s and yaksas (which include the goddesses
˙
Padmāvatı̄, Ambikā, and Cakreśvarı̄, and the gods Gomukha and Dharanendra) and the
˙
ksetrapāls (such as Bherujı̄) who protect places, and vı̄rs (the nonliberated heroes of
˙
Jainism) such as Mānibhadra and Ghantākarn Mahāvı̄r. In addition, there are deities
˙ ˙_ ˙
who protect the monastic lineages Ambikā and Bherujı̄ for the Khartar Gacch and
Mānibhadra for the Tapā Gacch. Finally, there are deities associated with specific
˙
places—for example, Śankheśvar Padmāvatı̄ who protects the Śankeśvar Pārśvanāth
Temple in Śankheśvar, Gujarat, and Padmamanı̄ (Mānibhadra) in Pābal, Maharashtra–
˙ ˙ _
who serve as regional protector deities for Jains who identify with the regions that they
oversee.
18. See Babb (1996, 102–136), Humphrey and Laidlaw (1994, 21–24), Laidlaw
(1995, 69–80), and Reynell (1985a, 130). Though the Jains I worked with occasionally
went to the Dādāwādi Mandir, which has the images of the Dādāgurus installed in a
_
shrine, I never saw particular attention them as agents of worldly well-being, nor did
anyone ever name the Dādāgurus as beings they worshiped. The overwhelmingly Tapā
Gacch identity of the ritual culture of Shivajinagar Jains meant that the Dādāgurus
were only referenced as a slightly exotic practice of other Jains. The elevation of the guru
to an object of worship is particularly resisted among Tapā Gacch Jains, but we see the
centrality of the veneration and worship of Tulsi Ācārya among Terāpanthı̄ Jains
(Vallely 2002, 171–181, 188–194, 218–221).
19. Women did not speak of failed requests. I suspect it is because the vows were
often framed in open-ended ways, which left room for the efficacy to be reconfigured. It
may also be that to recognize a failed vow is to recognize some flaw in one’s worship.
20. Wrist amulets of a string tied around a rolled-up piece of red fabric are called
generically “protective bundle” (raks.āpotlı̄), regardless of the sources of the blessing,
_
suggesting the centrality of them as protective amulets; the amulets are blessed by Jain
mendicants with a variety of mantras. Threads tied around the neck were referred to by
the name of the deity whose blessing is tied into the knots on the necklace–for example,
Padmāvatı̄ necklace (hār) or string (dorı̄/nādı̄). If there is a metal amulet attached to
_
the thread, the necklace was referred to by the image on the amulet–for example,
siddhacakra yantra or Bhaktāmar Stotra yantra. This differs from the red and yellow
tie-dyed thread (nādāchadı̄) tied around the wrists of those who perform a ritual; these
_ _
tie-dyed threads mark the performers of a ritual and therefore the immediate benefici-
aries of a ritual, and are not transferable to others who have not performed the ritual.
21. It is seen as the particular province of mothers and wives to distribute these
amulets, and not sisters or daughters. The particular blessings of sisters and mothers are
in many respects the most powerful–lasting a year (Raksa Bandhan) or a lifetime (wedding
˙
rites). I do not discuss these here because my focus is on women acting as wives rather than
as sisters or mothers. Although sisters certainly carry important protective roles in contexts
more South Asian and less particularly Jain (such as Raksa Bandhan), in most Jain
˙
contexts protection is carried by married women: mothers and wives. In addition to Raksa
˙
Bandhan (on Śrāvan Pūnam or Śrāvan full moon, also called Rākhi Pūnam), which was
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
performed universally among Jains in my observation, there is a particular fast–the Bı̄j
fast–which protects brothers. The fast begins on Brother Second (Bhāı̄ Bı̄j on Kārtak bright
second) a day on which married sisters bless and feed their brothers. At Jain weddings, as
in Hindu weddings, sisters are central to the protection of the groom and perform many of
the protective rites, including the lineage goddess worship (kuldevı̄ pūjā). The centrality of
sisters and father’s sisters (phoı̄) at a wedding is as striking as the relatively low profile taken
by the parents of the groom. Still, at the wedding the importance of auspicious wives
cannot be underestimated. All blessings are performed by married sisters and married
aunts. Unmarried sisters do not perform the protective rites.
22. A monk may bless a whole bowl filled with amulets, or the attendees at a pūjā
may tie knots in threads while mantras are being recited, effectively tying the mantra
into the knot.
23. The praksāl from the siddhacakra and the Navpad and Siddhacakra Mahāpūjās
˙
will be discussed further in chapter 4.
24. See Babb (1996, 85), Humphrey and Laidlaw (1994, 183; 1995, 70). Laidlaw
(1995, 70–71) mentions lay Jains drinking praksāl knowing, however, that they should
˙
not. I never observed or heard of this practice in Pune, but if one were to do this they
would probably do it in private, given the prohibition.
25. Though Jains are adamant that the offerings made in the temple are not
returned as blessed food, there are some objects that appear to act like prasād by
carrying blessings to the believer (Babb 1996, 94–96).
26. Other scholars have noted this belief; see Babb (1996, 65).
27. Tewari (1991, 7–8), too, mentions the social aspect of fasting along with the
importance of fasts as protective rites.
28. See Kelting (2001b, 46–48, 63–64) and Reynell (1985a, 133–136) for more
about the Aksaynidhi fast.
˙
29. Reynell also names the Kārtak Pūnam fast as one performed exclusively by
˙
women, but the fruits of this fast appear to be directed at liberation (Reynell 1985a,
207–208).
30. We can see how the acts match up with the six obligatory acts (āvaśyak). This
fast requires: (1) meditation (sāmāyik), (2) daily worship (caturvimśati-stava), (3) (kāūs-
_
sagg), (4) veneration of mendicants (guruvandan), (5) confession and expiation
(pratikraman.), and (6) vows to fast (pacckkhān.). See Balbir (1993), Cort (2001b,
122–127), _ Dundas (2002, 169–173), and Williams (1963, 184–215), for discussions of the
six obligatory practices.
31. This fast can only be performed by women; men are enjoined to perform
a parallel but different fast. The fasting instructions read: “Husbands should perform
the Āgādh fast. (This fast suggests living like a monk [pos.adh] and full fasts.
_
However, if one cannot live like a monk, then do not begin this fast.)” (Taporatna
Mahodadhi, 114–115). Laidlaw (1995, 224) writes of the Rohinı̄ fast as a women’s fast
˙
in his observations, as well. In her introduction to her translation of the Rohinı̄-
Aśokacandrakathā, Helen Johnson (1948, 168) also notes that although the story
suggests that both men and women perform the vow, only women perform the
Rohinı̄ fast.
˙
32. Rohinı̄ is the fourth of the twenty-seven naks.atra (lunar houses) and is shaped
˙
like a cart. It occurs in twenty-seven-lunar-day cycles, which are recorded in Jain ritual
_ based on the location of the moon in the constellations. The
calendars (pañcāng),
naksatra cycle is a day or two shorter than the cycle of new moon to new moon, and thus
˙
moves against the standard lunar calendar. The rohinı̄ naksatra is additionally governed
˙ ˙
by the moon (not all the naksatras are) and is seen as especially auspicious; rites
˙
performed on this date will lead to prosperity.
33. All fasting complexes will gain a certain measure of merit for the performer,
but these fasts are particularly good for extending that merit beyond the performer to
include her husband, children, and other family members.
34. In the introduction to her translation of the Rohinı̄-Aśokacandrakathā, Johnson
describes the celebration that marks the end of the fast with gifts to the temple, the
monks, and also to the congregation, in addition to a large worship ceremony directed
toward the Jina Vāsupūjya and a congregational meal (1948, 168).
35. Laidlaw points out that Rohinı̄ is also the name of the first of the Mahāvidyā-
˙
devı̄s–tantric goddesses who protect knowledge (Laidlaw 1995, 224). Although this
connection may have been significant at some point, no one ever suggested to me that
the benefits of the Rohinı̄ fast or, for that matter, any of the events in the life of the satı̄
˙
Rohinı̄ could attributed to astrology (rather than karma) or to the intervention of that
˙
goddess. The connection between these seems to have been lost.
36. The Rohinı̄-Aśokacandrakathā translated by Helen M. Johnson (1948) follows
the same plot line as the versions that I found in popular contemporary texts, but
includes a short section in which Rohinı̄’s mother gives her advice on wifehood.
˙
37. I radically abbreviate the monk’s accounting of Rohinı̄’s past lives. I never
˙
heard these past-life stories mentioned even briefly in oral tellings, so a gloss seems
adequate. In most oral tellings, the monk simply tells King Aśok that Rohinı̄
˙
experiences no sorrow because she did the Rohinı̄ fast in her past life, with no
˙
further elaboration.
38. The same Rohinı̄ story featuring Rohinı̄ and Aśok was included in two
˙ ˙
Digambar collections, Vrat Vidhi Evam Pūjā (1999, 35–43) and Jain Vrat Kathā Sangrah _
(130–134), as “Ath Rohinı̄ Vrat Kathā,” but this version does not include the episode
˙
in which the king throws the son off the roof. The fast is described in the same way,
but the duration is limited to five years and five months.
39. Many fasts have a fasting narrative (vrat kathā, tap kathā), which serves as a
charter for the fast, telling the fast’s origins, ritual particulars, rationales, and efficacy. In
written collections, there are two Rohinı̄ narratives that claim to be the fasting narrative
˙
for the Rohinı̄ fast. The two stories share the description of the Rohinı̄ fast, but differ
˙ ˙
radically in narrative content. These are not two versions of the same story; all the
characters are different except for Rohinı̄, and there are no overlapping episodes. It
˙
seems clear that two stories have become linked and fused on the basis of the name
of the heroine alone. In practice, only the version I give here is recited or told orally as
part of the fast. This version is also the only one that women told me when I asked
about Rohinı̄ satı̄, and is the same as the story other scholars have recorded in
˙
connection to this fast. Interestingly, the version I heard is also the version told in
other Jain communities who perform this fast, including Digambar Jains.
40. I imagine that this protection from the cares of the family might have partly
served as an impetus for some of the fasters, but no one ever named that as a benefit,
even privately. The fast is too difficult and prolonged to justify this as a primary reason.
41. After his death, she ceased to perform any of complex fasts. She explained this
as partly from a lack of motive (no husband to receive the benefits) and partly because
her own health was diminished by aging, and perhaps some discouragement that her
husband had died in spite of her fervent and devout efforts. Pearson (1996, 187–192)
writes of women who stop performing vrats after being widows for a similar complex
sets of reasons.
42. The hesitation to discuss the worldly benefits of Jain ritual practices is
widespread and probably reflects the generally ambivalent stance normative Jainism
had articulated regarding worldly benefit. This phenomenon has been discussed widely;
see Cort (2001b, 138–141), Kelting (2001b, 45–48), Laidlaw (1995, 227–229), and
Reynell (1985a, 56).
43. John Cort’s (2001b) monograph centers around the ways that Jains negotiate
and integrate these two “realms of value,” but gives this question special attention in
chapters 1 and 7. Laidlaw (1995) also addresses this tension at length with particular
attention in chapter 12 and the chapters in part 5.
44. The Rohinı̄ Sajjhāy, which is recommended as the sajjhāy (devotional hymn)
˙
on all Rohinı̄ days and thus would be recited by all fasters as part of the nightly
˙
confession (as well as by anyone else who is performing confession that day), suggests
that the fast will prevent any sorrow. The text of the sajjhāy includes a brief summary of
the Rohinı̄ story along with instructions for the fast and an account of the fast’s benefits.
˙
The sajjhāy suggests a number of results of this fast: “Do the Rohinı̄ fast and defeat
˙
sorrow, Rohinı̄ had a happy birth. . . . They had eight sons and four daughters and did
˙
not experience sickness or sorrow. . . . From this fast you will attain happiness” ( Jain
Sajjhāy Mālā 1986/1987, 15).
_
CHAPTER 3
1. In other chapters, I analyze four major satı̄ narratives (Rohinı̄, Maynāsundarı̄,
˙ ˙
Rājul, and Candanbālā) with direct links to ritual practices. The narratives associated
with rituals in Jain contexts tend to be fuller and more complex.
2. See, for example, Ahearn (2001), Gold (1995b), Minturn (1993), Puri (1999),
Raheja and Gold (1994), Raheja (1995), and Wadley (1995).
3. It is important to recognize that most women are happy with their choice to be
wives, and that the possibility of renunciation as a socially acceptable option for
escaping a bad marriage means that women not only choose to marry the first time but
also, because they continue to see the possibility of renunciation throughout their lives,
they likewise continue to choose marriage.
4. Women spoke of these suggestions in the language of “handing a problem
over” to someone or having someone else do something (karavāvu). They often were
glad to have someone else with more power step in, and would actively seek support
when appropriate. However, they likewise recognized that having someone else take
over meant that they were no longer in charge of the discourse of the problem and that it
might be resolved in ways they felt were less than ideal.
5. Though fasting is closely linked to notions of liberation in Hinduism, espe-
cially in the context of Hindu renouncers and their austerities, the centrality of devo-
tionalism in contemporary Hinduism and the practices of Hindu women link Hindu
laywomen’s fasting more to the acquisition of worldly powers and divine grace. Khan-
delwal (2004) gives a nuanced examination of this nexus of Hindu practices, which
challenges the dichotomy of austerity/male renouncer and devotion/service/laywoman.
6. This series was lent to me by a middle-aged Jain woman, who had herself
borrowed it from her sister-in-law. These particular books were making the rounds of
the laywomen with whom I worked for a few years.
7. Interestingly, Hindu satı̄mātā miracles (parco deno) include doors bursting

open after having been locked, veils floating to a satı̄’s hand, water turning into henna,
and fire being generated by the satı̄ herself (Weinberger-Thomas 2000, 45).
8. Of course, Jains routinely recite the Navkār mantra before engaging in an act
that carries real importance, so we could also read Subhadrā’s recitation of the Navkār as
part of the regular practice of mantra recitation, which gives a kind of overall protection.
9. An interesting analysis could be done of the representations of Buddhism and
Brahmanism in Jain satı̄ narratives, but that is outside the scope of this volume.
10. In this context, “love matches” of relatives in a family are reconfigured into
arranged marriages by the agreement of the parents and by the subsequent public
performance of a proper wedding with all its rites. The scramble to “arrange” a marriage
between a young man and woman who have fallen in love is often the deepest kind of
family secret, and only really works if both families agree and if the match is essentially
suitable. When the match is not essentially suitable–involving different religions, for
example–the acceptance of the bride in the groom’s family and the groom in the bride’s
can smooth the waters. If the family presents the match as acceptable, the community
will often follow suit and accept the couple. If one of the families rejects the marriage,
it can draw attention to the love match. That said, some relatives will inevitably reject
the new couple in order to disassociate themselves from potential scandal. Love matches
are widely discouraged in part because of the long-term effects on the marriage
prospects of a family’s other children and the economic importance placed on family
virtue as a sign of creditworthiness.
11. Since I began my work in this community, a few marriage arrangements have
been called off because the groom’s families were caught in significant misrepresen-
tations, though these were about temperament rather than scandals: alcohol con-
sumption and violence against female relatives. In a case where an engagement is
being broken, it is in the interest of the bride’s family to display the groom’s faults even
if it makes the parents look foolish, because it shows that the virtue of their own
daughter is not in question. I have not heard of a groom’s family canceling a wedding
because of a bride’s family’s misrepresentations, I suspect partly because the research
into a potential bride’s virtue is more thorough–young women with questionable virtue
do not get engaged to begin with–and partly because the breaches are less common
among these closely monitored young women. I also suspect that if the bride’s
virtue were suspect or could be challenged, the bride’s family might well go ahead
with a less than ideal marriage in order to prevent a careful reexamination of the
bride’s reputation.
12. For example, Mūrtipūjaks worship in temples, and Sthānakavāsı̄s reject temple
worship completely. Mūrtipūjaks and Sthānakavāsı̄s do not worship together, but often
come from shared subcastes and, on occasion, interact socially and for business. For
Śvetāmbar and Digambar matches, the styles of worship are quite different, but more
important, they are do not go to the same temples; these two communities rarely mix
socially, and they do not have any shared subcastes. John Cort (personal correspon-
dence) found that Mūrtipūjak Jains would consider marriages with Sthānakavāsı̄s, but
not with Terāpanthı̄s. Though there are few “mixed” marriages in the Shivajinagar
congregation, the few that I identified are between Mūrtipūjak and Sthānakavāsı̄s of the
same ethnic and subcaste groups.
13. In addition to a new bride’s adjustment to the religious expectations for married
women, the differences in deities (especially lineage goddesses, local Hindu deities,
and guardian deities in the local Jain temple) may leave a young bride without access to
a deity whose worship she felt to be protective. Harlan found that Rajput women
experienced a sense of loss from leaving behind their natal lineage goddesses and
developed strategies–including the identification of one of the seven mother goddesses
(saptamātrikā) on their pendants with their natal lineage goddess and another with their
affinal one–for integrating their natal lineage goddesses into their married lives (Harlan
1992, 97). One Jain woman told me that her devotion to the guardian goddess,
Padmāvatı̄, stood in for the worship of her own natal lineage goddess to whose
worship she no longer has access.
14. This story is similar to the stories of Mı̄rābāı̄’s refusal to convert her worship
when she arrived at her husband’s house (Harlan 1995a, 217).
15. Vimalasūri’s fourth-century Paūmicariyam (cantos 15–18) tells the story of
Añjanāsundarı̄. Añjanāsundarı̄ is the mother of Hanumān for Jains, as she is for
Hindus, but in the Jain context her narrative has taken on a life of its own. To start
with, neither Añjanā nor Hanumān is a monkey in the Jain version of the Rāmāyan.a.
Añjanā is human, Pavanañjay is a demigod (vidyādhara), and so is Hanumān. In fact,
in some tellings Hanumān’s godlike strength is attributed to the power of his mother’s
śakti rather than anything to do with his father or with demigod parentage (Fohr 2001,
145–146). Contemporary satı̄ collections (like Sulasā Candanbālā and Mahāsatı̄, Vol. 6)
tend to remove Añjanā’s story from the frame of the Rāmāyan.a, highlighting her
character as a Jain satı̄. Her story was told in two other sources given to me by
laywomen: Priyadarśan’s Jain Rāmāyan. (Gujarati) and Pushkar Muniji’s Best Jain
Stories (English).
The story of Añjanā is also included in medieval narrative collections such as
Śubhaśı̄lagani’s fifteenth-century Bharateśvar Bāhubalı̄ Vrttih, a narrative commentary
˙ _ _
on the Bharahesara nı̄ Sajjhāy–recited as part of the Tapā Gacch morning pratikraman–
˙
and recommended to monks for study as a source for sermons (Cort 2001a, 335).
Añjanā’s story is also a part of the Rāma story in puranic narrative collections such as
Hemacandra’s twelfth-century Trı̄s.as.ti-śalāka-purus.a-caritra, Book 7, Ch. 1–10 (1954,
_
107–352). Though I never heard any Jain tell the story of the Rāmāyan.a following the
Jain version, the story of Añjanā was always told in the Jain version and never in its
Hindu form. In his analysis of narratives associated with Hanumān, Lutgendorf
˙
(2007, esp. 50–52, 128–131, 181, 321–324) contextualizes the Jain Añjanā story within
the multiple Hindu tellings of the Rāmāyan.a.
16. Vimalasūri’s version has Pavanañjay reject Añjanā because he suspects her of a
prior lover rather than because he overhears any conversation at all. In one oral telling,
Añjanā’s friends were teasing her about how dark (ugly) he is compared to her fairness
of skin (Fohr 2001, 144), and in another they were saying he is not as good as her
friend’s husband, who was very religious (Best Jain Stories 1997, 215). However, the issue
for Pavanañjay in each case is that Añjanā did not defend him against criticism.
17. Reynell (1985a, 183–188) retells the story of Mrganlekhā, which shares its basic
_
structure and episodes with that of Añjanā but attributes all her misfortune to bad
karma and the return of happiness to the destruction of that bad karma. Mrganlekhā’s
_
misfortunes are seen as the result of her fate, and she does nothing to change that fate.
She simply suffers, partly protected by the power of her virtue, until the misfortune
ends. I was never told this story. It is clearly a narrative about the inevitability of
experiencing the fruits of one’s karma. The narratives that garnered the attention of
the Jains with whom I conduct my research usually centered around the ways that
individuals controlled–rather than accepted–their fate.
18. See Kulkarni 1990 for an extended discussion of the Jain Rāmāyan.a.
19. In one contemporary version, Añjanā positions herself as a satı̄ when she
names other satı̄s who have lived celibate lives to justify her choice to stay as the virgin
wife of Pavanañjay. The author then proceeds to compare Añjanā’s virtue to another
rejected-bride satı̄, Rājı̄matı̄ (to be discussed at length in chapter 5), whose pedigree as a
satı̄ is unquestioned (Best Jain Stories 1997, 215).
20. Women rejecting husbands is a less common and more deeply coded part of
the satı̄ narrative traditions, which is discussed in chapter 6. Contemporary Jain women
rarely reject their husbands in public, because of the power of pativratā ideologies in
their communities. But private rejection of a husband’s sexual advances or conversa-
tions can be used, within limits, as leverage by a woman to further her interests in her
marriage. This strategy can backfire into her husband’s retaliatory rejection of his wife,
which women can do little to change short of returning to their natal homes or divorce.
21. The story of Rājul, which is discussed in chapter 5, is the best known of this
latter form.
22. The svayamvara is symbolically enacted as part of the contemporary Jain
wedding rite. Before the rites of the wedding proper begin, the groom approaches the
threshold of the wedding door where—after the evil eye has been lifted from him and
his future mother-in-law has blessed him—the bride is brought forward and chooses
her groom by putting a garland over his head. After this, the couple enter the wedding
hall together.
23. Most older women generally disdained television and popular magazines as
valueless, though a few admitted to enjoying old movies on television. Men had more
control over money and were the primary film viewers both at theaters and at home.
Many men regularly watched serials, while claiming that these were women’s shows.
Young men shared in the desire for romantic marriages and would contrast their desires
with the model of marriages of the elders in their community who met on their
wedding day.
24. I have observed, at least among urban Jains in Pune, a growing sense of the
inevitability of house division, with joint families living under one roof becoming
increasingly rare. Likewise, after the death of the eldest generation (especially if their
grandchildren have begun to get married), it is common for the family to divide into
smaller units; this division, though painful for the family, is seen as necessary and
expected, because of the expectations that married couples have the privacy of their own
room, and carries no stigma. Often, the brothers have remained together until their
NOTES TO PAGE 68 197
parents died, in spite of crowding in the home, in order to spare their parents the pain of
household separation. As long as the family pools their financial resources, lives in the
same neighborhood, and can argue that one home is too cramped for their numbers,
they are understood to be and are spoken of as a joint family (akhand parivār). It is much
more expensive to maintain multiple homes and even more expensive to fully divide–
especially as the family will lose their tax advantage as a Hindu Undivided Family
(HUF) under the Indian Income-tax Act (1961) Section 2 (31)–so there is resistance to
full division. Whenever houses do divide, daughters-in-law are usually blamed for
causing strife within the family. That said, I certainly did hear women–including
women who were themselves mothers-in-law–speak of bad mothers-in-law who drove
their sons and daughters-in-law out of their homes.
25. In the only case of an unconsummated marriage that I knew of, the husband
admitted he was in love with someone else, and ultimately he married the woman he
loved, the first wife returned to her parents’ house with somewhat less stigma than most
divorced women, though she is still unmarried and living with her parents.
26. Although the social cost for unmarried men who engage in premarital rela-
tionships is relatively low–especially when compared to that of unmarried women–in
this community, marital fidelity is expected for men as well as for women. Men are
routinely scrutinized for moral virtue by business prospects and those who might lend
them money. Though repeated adultery, which would have been relatively obvious, was
rare (I was only aware of one case), individual acts of adultery by men–particularly with
prostitutes–would be much harder to detect. Discussions about infidelity and women’s
fears often came up in the safer arena of conversations about television serials and
movies, and would occasionally shift from there to real-life situations and rumors.
Though there were certainly occasional rumors of young women’s involvement in
premarital romance, I only heard one accusation of a woman being unfaithful to her
husband after marriage and only a few scattered hints about romances involving
divorced women. I also did not hear any rumors about older widows. One middle-aged
widow was accused of having an affair with her husband’s younger brother that started
before his marriage when she was a young widow and continued afterward. I did not
know or hear of any other young widows–no doubt a reflection of the socioeconomic
position of urban Jains and their access to good medical care–so I am unable to
determine whether these women would have been the target for these kinds of accu-
sations. Widows and divorced women would not be legally committing adultery, though
social norms would identify their acts as infidelities. Of course, none of these accusa-
tions were verifiable and, with the exception of the one case of a husband’s involvement
with his elder brother’s widow–she is the woman who was accused of being unfaithful
to her husband before he died–which led to his divorce, none was publicly recognized.
27. Eating is linked closely to sexual intimacy (Appadurai 1981, 497–498), and Jain
texts reflect this connection (Dundas 2008, 188–190). In particular, eating at home is a
mark of respect and affection for one’s wife. To eat out, then, is a rejection of that
intimacy. There were a few times when “eating out” was used euphemistically to suggest
that a man was having an affair with another woman. Of course, it is extremely unlikely
that a man would be eating regularly at the house of another woman, since that would
be a very public statement of intimacy. Likewise, the use of “eating out” for adultery does
not mean that occasional eating out at restaurants was seen as a sign of adultery; but if a
man never or rarely ate at home, especially for the evening meal, there would be talk
about where he might be eating. Even if there was no question of adultery–all meals
accounted for somehow–not eating at home was still interpreted as a rejection.
28. This strategy has leverage if the woman’s claims are related to misrepresenta-
tion in marriage arrangements, substance abuse, emotional abuse, or physical abuse
by one’s husband or other relations; if these kinds of accusations or rumors are heard,
the husband’s family may have real trouble getting their other children married or
finding business partners.
29. Minturn (1993, 211) found that women reported that they were less likely to
suffer from spousal abuse in a joint family because of the pressure of familial censure.
In one case where a husband was avoiding his wife by eating all his meals out, I was told
that his aunt and grandmother censured him in front of his whole family for eating out
too much. Though all parties privately spoke of his avoidance as an error in the
treatment of his wife, the censure in public centered around wasting money on meals
out. The husband changed his ways, and the marriage did improve.
30. Gold (Raheja and Gold 1994, 42) found that bāt-chı̄t was a euphemism for
sexual intercourse among Rajasthani women, as well. Fruzetti (1982, 14) reports that
young brides often will not speak to their husband unless they are alone, which usually
occurs at night, further strengthening the link between emotional intimacy (marked by
the sign of conversation) and sexual intimacy.
31. Weinberger-Thomas (2000, 132) reports that widows who have a son are
permitted to wear the auspicious yellow veil of mothers (pı̄liyā) and are sometimes said
to be only “half a widow.”
32. Bennett (1983, 181) reports that the birth of a son may trigger quarrels between
mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, as the daughter-in-law may decide that she need not
show deference to her mother-in-law any more.
33. It may be that the woman used this talk as leverage–it was her husband who
was the motivation for greater spacing between their children–or that they had concerns
that they were losing status by not having a son. In any case, there was also pressure on
the couple to produce a son.
34. The same story was told to Narayan as one of bad wedding arrangements and
deception, but without the pregnancy or accusations of shamelessness (Narayan 1997,
59–63).
35. This story served as the foundation for a popular Hindi-language film, Jai
Santos.ı̄ Mā, and the fast became much more popular after the film’s release (Erndl 1993,
141–145; Kurtz 1992, 13–28; Pearson 1996, 102, 176–177).
36. See Bennett (1983, 180–186, 251), Raheja and Gold (1994, 121–136), Minturn
(1993, 303–309). Though pronounced tensions are reported between a sister and a wife,
especially around issues of gifting (Raheja and Gold 1994, 73–106; Minturn 1993,
117–131, 307–308), both Reynell (1985a) and I found that this relationship was usually
relatively close among the Jains. Perhaps the relative wealth of the Jain communities
means gifts to daughters do not preempt gifts to wives, and wives were not asked to turn
their goods over to sisters-in-law. Sisters and wives are not the point of conflict in Jain
narratives, either. I also observed that certain gifts discussed by scholars of other
communities (the gifts from one’s dowry to one’s husband’s sister and the gifts to one’s
husband’s sister at the birth of child) were often omitted in Jain families or, if given, they
were truly nominal. There were some complaints about special goods being set aside for
the dowries of daughters, but these complaints were not very common, probably
reflecting the relative ease with which dowry goods are collected in this community,
and the social stigma among Jains of this kind of transfer. Dowry money, of course,
would be fungible. I observed that bonds between daughters and daughters-in-law were
a common strategy to forge good relations in one’s marital home and to please one’s
husband by pleasing his sister, which of course reflects the potential power of that
sister to disrupt that happiness.
37. Among the Jains with whom I conducted research, it was customary to strive
for marriage arrangements that functioned as alliances, especially for business, rather
than hypergamy, which diminishes the opportunity for dealing with each other as
equals, as required for cooperative business dealings. That said, there are some forms
of structural hypergamy in gifting and etiquette, especially at the weddings themselves.
38. This narrative could provide justification for the use of ordination as a form
of divorce. Sı̄tā’s leaving Rām has been read as a kind of divorce in some Hindu
contexts (Kishwar 2001, 289, 307; Nilsson 2001, 152). However, most Jains are relatively
unaware of the Jain version of the Rāmāyan.a beyond a few details about differences
from the mainstream Hindu version; their knowledge of the Rām and Sı̄tā story
appeared to me to be based on the televised version of the Rāmāyan.a and the Hindu
versions read in school and comic books.
39. The Sthānānga _ Sūtra (157, 355, 712/3/2/180–183) provides a long list of reasons
one might renounce, including a wish for happiness in this world, to achieve separation
or divorce, out of anger, reaction to an insult, or through fear. Any of these reasons
might be used to justify renunciation as a form of divorce.
40. Shāntā likewise reports a small but substantial percentage of Jain nuns
(Khartar Gacch 8.8 percent, Sthānakavāsı̄ 16 percent, an unnamed group 3 percent) to
have taken ordination leaving behind a husband (Shāntā 1997, 439–440, 448). Balbir
found that among the 531 Terāpanthı̄ nuns surveyed in 1981 ninety-two (17 percent)
were married when they took ordination and an additional forty (7 percent) were either
widows or separated from their husbands at the time of ordination (Balbir 1994, 124).
41. Men are certainly part of the equation here; the public acts of men are evaluated
as evidence of virtue, but in general the virtues of men’s acts adhere to the man who
performs them and the virtues of women’s acts adhere to the family as a whole. For
example, when men from virtuous families do not act in virtuous ways, they are seen
as wayward rather than as an indication of the family’s downward turn. This accounts
for the relative leniency toward male misbehavior.
42. A side effect of this piety arises out of the communal nature of many women’s
rituals, during which the woman can create a community for herself outside of her
home (Kelting 2001b, 47–48; 2006b, 193, 196–197; Reynell 2006, 219–220).This is
also true of Hindu women who find in vow-taking practices an opportunity for a
community outside their families. See Pintchman (2005, throughout but especially
146–155) for an excellent examination of Hindu women’s ritual communities.
43. Vallely (2002, 98) found that for a new partial initiant (saman.ı̄ ) into the
Terāpanthı̄, fasting and other austerities were a "powerful form of currency," which
these aspirants used strategically to prove their readiness for full ordination. However,
Vallely (2002, 101–102) also writes of several samanı̄s who did not desire to become full
˙
nuns (sādhvı̄s) because nuns spend a greater portion of their day on domestic duties
such as acquiring food.
CHAPTER 4
1. Although Maynāsundarı̄ is not included in any of the formal satı̄ lists, she is
˙
always referred to as a satı̄ or mahāsatı̄ by contemporary Jains and by the many tellings
of her story, and is included in informal–nonliturgical–lists (Kelting 2006d, 192).
2. Both of these rituals focus on the siddhacakra (also called the Navpad), which is
the yantra of the key Jain mantra, the Navkār. The Navkār mantra honors the five
highest beings in Jain moksa-mārg ideology and suggests that the mantra itself is a
˙
powerful tool for creating auspiciousness and destroying bad karma. This mantra serves
as an all-purpose mantra that can be used to protect, to create auspiciousness, to
represent all that is worthy of worship in a condensed manner, and as a substitute for
other mantras and acts. The power of the Navkār mantra to do these things is cited in
both narrative literature and in personal accounts by contemporary Jains. Recitation
of this mantra is a basic practice of Jains. The siddhacakra–also called the Navpadjı̄–is
the yantra that represents the manifest form of this important mantra with the addition
of the Three Jewels: Right View, Right Knowledge, and Right Action, along with a fourth
jewel, if you will, Right Austerity. It is the central object of veneration in the Navpad pūjā
and the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā, as well as all ritual practices associated with the
Āyambil Olı̄ and Navpad Olı̄ fasts. The connections between Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄
_ _ ˙
and this very central mantra explain some of the widespread knowledge of this story.
3. The version that was nearly universal in book collections and as the source for
mendicant sermons of the story and its themes from 1993 to 2002 was Śrı̄pāl Rājā no
Rās as published by Jain Prakāśan Mandir in Ahmedabad. This version gives the text as
written by Vinayvijay and Yaśovijay composed in Gujarati in 1682 with a modern
Gujarati gloss after each verse, and includes the ritual instructions for the Navpad Olı̄
_
fast and the Navpad pūjā after the main text. It also includes a number of plates,
including one of the Siddhacakra mahāyantra. I found a Hindi version (in Devnagari
and with Hindi gloss) in a book store, but even in Hindi-speaking households I found
the Gujarati version in book collections. The oldest known telling of this oft-told
narrative is Ratnaśekhara’s Prakrit-language Sı̄rivāla Kahā composed earlier than 1372
(Cort 2001b, 231 n 39). However, Vinayvijay and Yaśovijay’s version has become the
standard. There are many contemporary retellings of the story, including works in rāso
style, novels, poetry, ritual manuals, recitation cassettes, and video dramas.
4. I am translating the term svayamvara, in which the princess chooses a prince to
marry from an assembly of princes.
5. In contemporary Jain lay communities, personal stories abound of flowers that

fall off images into the hands or sari end of Jain worshipers, indicating a kind of
blessing. When pressed, people were quick to say it was an indicator of good karma
rather than an act of grace, but when the stories were given spontaneously there was a
sense of it as a kind of blessing and a mark of religious favor.
6. The published version of this story gave the monk the name Muni Candra-
sūrijı̄. This change seems an easy mistake, in part because “sūri” is a mendicant title
that is usually permanently appended to the mendicant’s name.
7. In 2001, the sermons devoted to Śrı̄pāl’s story after his healing were more
sparsely attended, with only a few people who were not performing the Navpad Olı̄ fast.
_
8. I suspect that the elision of Śrı̄pāl’s subsequent marriages arises out of the
idealization of Śrı̄pāl and Maynā’s marriage. The ideal marriage would not be a polyg-
˙
amous one–at least that would not be ideal for women—but monks likewise gloss over
or completely omit Śrı̄pāl’s other marriages.
9. Vimal identifies himself as the student of Tapā Gacch monk Vijayasenasūri
and is identified elsewhere in the sajjhāy collection as Vimalasūri, who lived in the mid-
sixteenth century.
10. “Siddhānta” in this context clearly refers to Jain philosophy, not the siddhānta
of Śaiva schools.
11. Stories of daughters arguing with their fathers about their fate can be found in
collections of Hindu stories (see McDaniel 2003, 65–68; Narayan 1997, 109–118).
12. Walsh does give a description of one episode in a manual in which the husband
tells his wife to learn cooking from his mother; but the tone makes it clear that these are
insignificant lessons (“What is there to teach about cooking?”) that are not the kinds of
learning that matter (Walsh 2004, 58).
13. In a sense, the greatest threat to male hegemony in the home is a strong
relationship between a man’s wife and his mother.
14. In my anecdotal observation of Jain ritual culture in North America, Jain laymen
seem to position themselves as the key religious experts, and when in doubt, they refer to
printed texts for answers. This architecture of knowledge differs considerably from my
observations in India, where religious knowledge is an area of women’s expertise, and men
ask senior female relatives for guidance on religious issues. On the rare occasions (or in
cases of astrological questions) when men felt that the senior women in their own families
did not have sufficient expertise, they asked Jain mendicants. In India, Jain laymen did not
position themselves as religious experts in either case.
15. This was more true in families where men were unable to perform many
rituals. When men took a more active part in ritual life, then the success was often said
to arise out of the male head of household’s acts both religiously and mundanely
through virtue and prestige.
16. It seemed to arise from his sense of her as a role model of women’s religiosity
in the community, but since her husband is not Jain, he may also have been marking
her persistence in being a public Jain and its potential to convert her husband.
17. Even when there were occasional complaints that a particular woman’s
religious practices were taking her away from work, those wives who brought more
orthopraxic behavior to the whole family were praised. Even as men sometimes
grumbled about the increased restrictions on the foods they ate, they also commented
on how this would improve their karma and their overall virtue.
18. The liturgy of the Navpad pūjā is can also be found in pūjā collections such as
_
Vividh Pūjā Sangrah.
19. It may be that Maynā’s solo performance of the worship is a strategy to
˙
avoid having a leper perform the worship. This is a possible explanation for his absence,
but it was never mentioned to me in interviews nor was it represented in the written
versions or the dramatic reenactments.
20. Many performers of the Navpad Olı̄ fast learn its detailed instructions and
_
recite the texts directly from a commonly owned fasting manual dedicated to this
particular fast, though the basic form of the fast is well known to laywomen. The widely
available Navpad Olı̄ fasting manual, Navpad Olı̄nı̄ Vidhi, gives extensive directions for
_ _
the performance of the fast and includes all of the texts considered ideal for recitation
during the performance of the fast and its accompanying rituals of confession and
worship. The Navpad Olı̄ is sufficiently complex, with different texts for each of its
_
nine days, that most households in which someone has performed the fast and virtually
all temple collections contain at least one copy of this manual.
21. The Āyambil Olı̄ is performed twice a year for nine days beginning on Āso
_
(September/October) bright seventh and Caitri (March/April) bright seventh. The
Navpad Olı̄ begins in Āso and continues for nine cycles lasting four and a half years. The
_
fall Āyambil Olı̄ overlaps with the autumnal festival of Navrātrı̄, occasionally conflicting
_
with performances of lineage goddess worship (gotraj) because the food restrictions in
these two rituals conflict. The spring Āyambil Olı̄ is near the spring Navrātrı̄ and the
_
spring festival of Mother Ten worship, as well. Although the Āyambil Olı̄ festival is not
_
directed at the worship of goddesses (the Jain guardian goddesses, for example, play no
role in the festival), the coincidence of the timings and the duration of nine days suggest
long-standing shared religious and cultural calendars and, perhaps, competition.
22. See Cort (2001b, 118–120) and Laidlaw (1995, 221–224) for descriptions of this
central yantra. For details about the fast requirements, see the Navpad Olı̄nı̄ Vidhi.
_
23. The food must be made without dairy products, oils, or spices (except black
pepper). In addition, fasters may only drink water between noon and sunset. See
Mahias (1985) for an extensive discussion of Jain food ways.
24. Many Jain nuns and occasional older Jain laywomen take a vow to perform a
lifelong āyambil fast. Though difficult, it is not impossible. One elderly woman I knew
took a life-long āyambil vow after her husband died and lived on this fast for nearly
twenty years (from 1982 until her death in 2002). Though she told me that she took this
vow in order to achieve a birth as one who would be a nun (she was too infirm to
renounce), it is also possible that this fast (so closely linked to marital felicity in other
contexts) may have been a personal act of atonement for her inability to prevent her
husband’s death. Thanks to John Cort for bringing this to my attention as a possible
interpretation of her vow.
25. Other Jain fasts may have fasting narratives (most notably the Varsı̄tap, the
˙
Aksaynidhi fast, Candanbālā fast—to be discussed in chapter 6—and, of course, the
˙
Rohinı̄ fast discussed in chapter 3), but the Navpad Olı̄ fast uniquely requires that one
˙ _
study the narrative, which is not a bare-bones hymn recited as part of the daily
confession but rather a fully constructed epic poem.
26. The other powerful mantra/yantra ritual complex is that of the Bhaktāmar
stotra and the Bhaktāmar mahāmantra pūjā. This text and yantra are credited with a
variety of protections against illness and disasters, but most notably against fire,
snakebite, and imprisonment (Cort 2006; Lefeber 1995, 426–433); it is not granted
efficacy for the particular concerns of wives. A very popular book, Sacitra Bhaktāmar
Stotra: Illustrated Bhaktamar Stotra, gives the text of each verse, translations in Hindi,
Gujarati, and English and an illustration of each verse. Though identifiably Sthānaka-
vāsı̄ (the stotra differs slightly), this book was popular with Mūrtipūjāk Jains, probably
because of the glosses and the pictures. The images indicated the powers of particular
verses. This mantra/pūjā complex, though popular, did not come up in discussions
about wifehood, though it did arise in discussions about motherhood. I suspect this is
partly because the questions of wifehood and marriage seem so fully covered by the
Navkār/Navpad/Āyambil complex.
27. This liturgy was found in Siddhacakra Yantroddhār Brhat Pūjanvidhih, a
_
collection of mahāpūjās (grand public pūjā liturgy performances) dedicated to_ the
siddhacakra. Ratnaśekhar also wrote the earliest extant version of the Śrı̄pāl and
Maynāsundarı̄ story (see note 3 of this chapter).
˙
28. Leucoderma, more properly called vitiligo in medical contexts, is a disease
whose cause is unknown but which doctors suspect may be an auto-immune disorder.
It creates white patches on the skin and in some cases the eventual total loss of pigment.
It is itself physically harmless, though it may indicate an auto-immune disorder.
However, leucoderma’s long-standing associations with leprosy and its dramatic effect
on appearance create problems for marriageability; no sufferer of this disease would
therefore call its effects harmless.
29. All girls, unmarried women, and pregnant women were encouraged to apply
the bathing water from the worship of the siddhacakra to their skin to prevent this
unsightly disease, which many feared. The blotches of white skin and the eventual loss
of pigment were seen as a serious bar to a good marriage and perhaps even a bar to any
marriage offers at all. The collection of the bathing water from the pūjā and also from
the daily Snātra pūjās during the Olı̄ festivals was seen as particularly efficacious.
_
Though the siddhacakra was bathed every day, and that water was always available for
such blessings, it was when the siddhacakra was worshiped in ways that most closely
linked it to Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ that it sharpened its healing focus to skin diseases.
˙
30. Anecdotally, when my son was born, he was given the name Śrı̄pāl by an older
woman in Pune in fulfillment of a dream she had in which a “Maynāsundarı̄” came to
˙
him in marriage and made both him and me blissfully happy. Nearly every time a
married Jain laywoman heard his Indian name, they exclaimed that someday our house
would be blessed with a daughter-in-law like Maynā.
˙
31. Men, too, usually invoked Śrı̄pāl and Maynāsundarı̄ as the ideal couple, though
˙
once in a while they named Rām and Sı̄tā. Monks and nuns always named Śrı̄pāl and
Maynā as the perfect Jain couple–with one exception, when one monk named Kumārpāl
˙
and his unnamed queen. When thinking of ideal marriages that were potentially
possible in the present time and for lay Jains, all named Maynā and Śrı̄pāl.
˙
32. This hymn is also reprinted in general hymn collections, such as Prı̄taladı̄
_
Bandhān.ı̄ Re (no date, 172).
33. Superficially, these two yantras are both of the siddhacakra, but the emphases
differ. In the Siddhacakra mahāyantra the emphasis is on the protective rings
surrounding the siddhacakra, and the yantra includes rings of protective deities who are
invoked to protect both the siddhacakra yantra and also the sponsor of the worshipers.
The Navpad mahāyantra emphasizes the characteristics associated with each of the nine
stations of the siddhacakra. The former yantra is the focus of the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā
and the latter is the focus of the less common Navpadjı̄ mahāyantra mahāpūjā.
34. I have written about the origin story of this temple and its visual depictions
elsewhere (Kelting n.d.).
35. The Navpad pūjā was performed by anyone who completed a Navpad Olı̄, but
_
also was performed at the end of each Āyambil Olı̄ cycle, and in some congregations it
_
was performed on each of the nine days of every Āyambil Olı̄ cycle. The Siddhacakra
_
mahāpūjā was less common and considerably more involved, but was still the most
common of the large-scale mahāpūjās, in part because of its efficacy in blessing a whole
family or lineage. There are other less commonly performed siddhacakra formal pūjās,
such as the Navpad mahāyantra mahāpūjā, the 346 Gunayukta Navpad pūjā, and the
˙
108 Gunayukta Paramesthi mahāyantra pūjan. These pūjās and other less common
˙ ˙_
pūjās alongside key accompanying texts and explanations are available in a single
volume, Siddhacakra Yantroddhār Brhat Pūjanavidhih, available at Jain bookstores. This
_ _ was recited on both occasions I
is the volume from which the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā
was able to observe this pūjā in its entirety. The Navpad pūjā text is also included in the
_
widely available pūjā collection, Laghu Pūjā Sangrah, which is a collection of the most
commonly performed pūjās. I have observed the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā on three
occasions at the Śrı̄ Ajitnāth Temple in Shivajinagar. First, on 5 January 1999, I observed
a Siddhacakra mahāpūjā performed by a single family in the name of their deceased
grandfather; attendance was by invitation and included the whole congregation and
friends and relatives from elsewhere–approximately 400 people attended. The other
two performances I observed were on 12 October 2001 and 14 October 2001 as part of a
six-day festival in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ordination of the monk
Devguptavijayjı̄, who was on rainy season retreat at the temple. These latter two were
performed by single families who sponsored the mahāpūjās as part of the festival, but
the attendance was open to the public and advertised in the congregation and around
Pune. These latter pūjās were advertised on a poster for the festival that was sent to all
the Jain temples in Pune district. On all three occasions professional singers and ritual
specialists (vidhikār) were hired. For the 1999 Siddhacakra mahāpūjā there was also a
_
professional ritual artist (angikār) employed to make the large yantra on which the
offerings are made. The mahāpūjās also require the presence of a Jain monk to recite
some of the more powerful mantras. The ritual specialist instructs the sponsors in what
to do when, but also gives sermon-like explanations of the particular facets of the
mahāpūjā.
36. In his work on the great merchant donors Vastupāl and Tejapāl, Steve Heim
(personal communication) found that Anupamā, the wife of Tejapāl, was herself a
major donor and was included in the narratives. This is an exception to the usual pattern
in which the merchant is seen as an individual moral agent, with a nod toward his
location within an illustrious male lineage.
37. The pūjā instructions in Siddhacakra Yantroddhār Brhat Pūjanvidhih gives lists
_ _ person-
of what one needs for the Siddhacakra mahāpūjā, including a list of necessary
nel. For each of the nine stations, one needs a married couple. Married couples are also
required for nine other offerings, and auspiciously married women for two more
(Siddhacakra Yantroddhār Brhat Pūjanvidhih, 103). In other mahāpūjās it is common to
_ _
see full family groupings or groups of siblings performing ritual units rather than this
attention to the married couple.
38. Jain widows are allowed access to all rituals, and even in this mahāpūjā, which
specifically calls for married sponsors, widows are not barred from participating
alongside the couple. Widows are never constituted as inauspicious in specifically Jain
contexts; they are welcome at all pūjās, initiations, fasts, and other Jain related events,
and they can feed and venerate mendicants, recite auspicious prayers, and perform
all rituals including auspicious closing rites. That said, they are restricted from
performing rites associated with new daughters-in-law and weddings, and without a
husband cannot be half of a sponsoring couple when a couple is called for. Unmarried
girls and wives whose husbands were unable to attend were also ineligible to serve as
lone worshipers for any of the sections of this pūjā. However, there are rituals that state
specifically that they should be performed by by couples (jodı̄), by married women
_
(saubhāgyavatı̄), by men (purūs.a)–with no explicit statement on whether they are
married men, unmarried men (kumār), or widowers—and by unmarried girls (kumārı̄
_
or kunvarı̄); there are no rituals for widows or even unmarked women (strı̄ or śrı̄matı̄)
without a designation like married (saubhāgyavatı̄) or unmarried (kumārı̄). There are
also no rituals explicitly for boys (kumār or chokro).
CHAPTER 5
1. I was fortunate to present earlier versions of this chapter as the Ernest Bender
Memorial Lecture at University of Pennsylvania in April 2007 and as part of the South
Asian Studies Council Lecture Series at Yale University in October 2007. My thinking
was sharpened by the questions and comments of those colleagues and students who
attended both of these presentations.
2. The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Bill, 1987, came into effect on 21 March,
1988. This act was an extension of the Rajasthan Sati (Prevention) Ordinance of 1
October 1987. This ordinance and later the act of 1987 in many ways restate existing
antisatı̄ legislation, but most important, it added legislation banning the glorification or
worship of satı̄s; the act outlaws the practice of satı̄, abetting satı̄, propagating satı̄
discourse, and the glorification of satı̄.
3. Somani (1981, 77–90) references Nahtā’s study of Jain inscriptions in Bikaner,
_
which include satı̄ death inscriptions in the eighth to tenth centuries, and then further
satı̄ death inscriptions that appear in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There is
also inscriptional evidence of a few Jain satı̄ deaths in the seventeenth century. Though
by no means as common among Jains as it was among Rajputs, it is clear that Jains have
had satı̄ deaths and that they were marked with donation and inscription.
4. There appears to be no bar against intermarriage between Rajasthani Hindus
and Jains in the Agarval and Oswal castes (Babb 2004, 145). Cort (2001b, 57–58)
notes that there are six major caste groups among Patan Jains (Vı̄śā and Dasā
Śrı̄mālı̄, Vı̄śā and Dasā Porvāl, and Vı̄śā and Dasā Osvāl) and that although these
_ _ _
castes are dominantly Jain, each includes Pustimārg Vaisnav Hindus, as well. Inter-
˙_ ˙˙
marriage was frequent until recently, when Jain identity was prioritized by reformist
Jains.
5. One Jain woman secretly told me about a box with the wedding necklace
pendant from a family satı̄mātā, which was worshiped in their household shrine, but
which would not have been seen by nonfamily members. The secrecy seemed more out
of a concern that it was somehow “un-Jain” rather than the more politically charged
question about whether its veneration was proscribed by the new Indian legislation.
I was unable to determine whether this satı̄mātā had been raised as a Hindu or Jain,
because the woman was unsure and the family’s caste was one in which intermarriage
was frequent. Babb (Babb 2004, 158–162) also gives one version (Bharatpur version)
of the founding of the Śrı̄māl caste in which the caste is created out of the progeny of
a merchant’s daughter who is a satı̄, but whose husband is revived before the ritual
is performed. He suggests that this satı̄ may well have been a family or lineage
goddess first.
6. Nuns consistently named married Jain satı̄s as key satı̄s because of their fidelity
to husband and Jainism. I suspect that because I am a married woman they focused on
those satı̄s who would be of use to me as a model. When I was with unmarried young
women, the nuns often told the story of Candanbālā, who never married, suggesting a
response to audience identity.
7. Damayantı̄ is one case, but that story was not widely told–I only was told the
story once by nun who was studying many of the stories. Damayantı̄ ultimately fails to
reach enlightenment because she follows Nala out of mendicancy, just as she follows
him into it (Kelting forthcoming).
8. The only other common overt representation of strong emotion is found in
representations of Candanbālā’s tears at the rejection of her offering of alms to Mahāvı̄r.
This will be discussed briefly in chapter 6, but an extensive discussion of the role of
emotion in Jainism focused on Candanbālā’s tears can be found in Kelting 2007.
9. Cundadı̄ gı̄t (though not necessarily named with that genre designation) are
_
performed by Gujarati Hindus to goddesses at Navrātrı̄ and as part of lineage goddess
worship. There are also similar songs–including ones in Gujarati wedding song
collections such as Saurabh Lagnagı̄t Sañcay–that appear to be intended to be sung as
part of lineage goddess worship at weddings. I am including those songs whose refrain
or verses are organized around the image of the cundadı̄ as well as those who are
_
designated cundadı̄s, because not all songs are given a genre designation in song
_
collection publications.
10. Devcand was a Jain layman who wrote the Nemanāthno Saloko in Samvat 1900
(1843–1844 ce). In the closing lines of the poem he identifies himself with the _
_
Vı̄śāśrı̄mālı̄ subcaste and tells the reader that he came from the village of Gāngad in
Gujarat. He also wrote Vivekavilāsano Śaloko (Deśāı̄ 1989, 318–319).
11. Jain women attended this recitation to promote their marital happiness. Many
older and middle-aged women told me that this text had been recited as part of their
wedding ceremonies as a blessing on their marriage. This text and its recitation will be
discussed further in the conclusion.
12. The mūlasūtras are the “root” texts that all Jain monks are expected to study.
The Uttarādhyayana Sūtra is also believed to be the last sermon of Mahāvı̄r.
13. In the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra, Rajimati’s renunciation occurs before Nemi is
enlightened. In the Nemanāthno Saloko, she renounces on the fifty-first day, when
Nemi achieves enlightenment. In medieval phāgu and bārahmāsa poetry, Rājul waits
four months or twelve months for the return of Nemi before resigning herself to
renunciation.
14. Rājul does not show much enthusiasm or devotional sentiment (bhāv) for
dı̄ksā; instead she seems more resigned that nunhood beats spinsterhood or rejected
˙
wifehood and a recognizes her vulnerable position as a rejected wife.
15. Haribhadra’s Tı̄kā to the Daśavaikālika Sūtra. Rājı̄matı̄ hands Rathanemi a cup
with vomit in it to illustrate her own vileness, and asks why he would want to drink
the vomit of Nemi (Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 1968, 116 n. 2). Villification of the female
body and even any body are tropes in South Asian renunciation texts. See Mrozik (2007,
83–112) for an excellent discussion of the complexity of this strategic rejection of the
body in Buddhist texts.
16. Dundas (2000) illuminates the clear links between food and sexuality in Jain
texts associated with the Nemi story cycle. He also gives an excellent analysis of the
Nemi story in light of questions of Jain identity as marked by vegetarianism and the
suspect morality of Krsna in Jain literature.
_˙ ˙
17. The story of Rathanemi becomes an attempt to stop Rājul from fulfilling her
destiny. Hindu satı̄mātā narratives often include episodes where family members or
other community members try to stop the satı̄ from following through with her wish to
die with her husband. In each case, the satı̄ not only perseveres but converts the
nonbelievers, often compelling them to take additional vows. Similarly, in the sajjhāy
Rājul converts Rathanemi and convinces him to either take ordination or return to the
vows of his ordination.
18. Although Jacobi’s note on Rathanemi (Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 1968, 116 n. 2)
identifies him as the elder brother of Nemināth, in other texts Rathanemi is identified as
Nemi’s younger brother.
19. There are several Jain authors named Hitavijay, but the author of Rājı̄matı̄
Sajjhāy is likely to be the Hitavijay who was the disciple of Śubhavijay (Deśāı̄ 1988, 201)
and therefore was probably writing in the early seventeenth century. There is an early-
sixteenth-century text entitled Rājı̄matı̄ Sajjhāy, but the author is not given (K. Shah,
1993, 112). Another Rājı̄matı̄ Sajjhāy is attributed to Jinahars (Désāı̄ 1988, 141), but that
˙
text is not anthologized in any Jain sajjhāy collections I have studied in which other
works by Jinahars are commonly found. Special thanks are due to Steve Vose for his
˙
assistance in finding Hitavijay.
20. Rājul is referred to by the more Sanskritic form of her name, suggesting the
links to the earlier traditions of this story as a renunciation narrative.
21. In contemporary Jain communities, young women are understood to be wives
from the ritual of the hand-joining (haste milāp), of which the ponkhanā is the
˙
preliminary rite.
22. I did not observe or hear of this rite being done by contemporary Jains. In fact,
on several occasions Jain laywomen and laymen expressed distaste for a ritual they saw
as a Hindu one. The grounds for this distaste were primarily the very intimacy of
sharing one’s bathing substance, which was seen as polluting. At Jain weddings there
were ceremonial anointings with oil and turmeric and bathing in a fragrant paste
(sugandha), but the substance was not exchanged with the other wedding party. Nor
did any woman tell me that it used to be different. Of course, Jains were all familiar
with the rite and would understand the intimacy of that act.
23. A satı̄ is transformed into a satı̄mātā at the performance of the rite of dying
with her husband, even if her transformation into a wife is incomplete. For example,
Nārāyanı̄ Satı̄mātā, though her wedding rites are not completed–she has not gone to
˙
her husband’s house and therefore has not consummated her marriage–is understood
to be a satı̄mātā of great power (Courtright 1994, 32).
24. One of the two oldest phāgu, Rājaśekharasūri’s Neminātha-phāgu (c. 1349) was
dedicated to Rājul’s laments after her rejection (Vaudeville 1986, 23). The oldest
bārahmāsā is Bārah navaū (c. twelfth/thirteenth century) written by Dharmasūri
(Vaudeville 1986, 18) and the oldest viraha bārahmāsa is Vinayacandrasūri’s Rājal
Bārahmāsā (fourteenth century) cited in this chapter. The bārahmāsā of separation does
not originate, despite Zbavitel’s (1976)–and subsequently others’–mistaken attribution,
from the story of Rādhā and Krsna; the oldest known Jain versions predate these Bengal
_˙ ˙
Vaisnav texts by over a century (Vaudeville 1986, 17). Most of these Jain Bārahmāsā
˙˙
poems retell the story of Nemināth’s renunciation on his wedding day and the suffering
of his renounced wife, Rājı̄matı̄.
25. Within Nāhtā’s collection alone, there are over a hundred manuscripts of Jain
_
bārahmāsā poems (Vaudeville 1986, 4). The oldest known phāgu is Jinapadmasūri’s
Thūlibhaddu Phāgu (c. 1330). It is the story of the monk Sthūlibhadra who, after his
ordination, is sent by his guru to spend the rainy season retreat with his former lover
Kośā to test his vow of celibacy. Sthūlibhadra’s steadfast celibacy and sermons convince
Kośā to leave her life as a prostitute in order to renounce and be a Jain nun. We can see
this narrative as a mirror of the Rathanemi story. For a discussion of the Sthūlibhadra
story and its connections to celibacy, see Dundas 2008.
26. The Rājal Bārahmāsā is embedded in Nemināth Catus.padikā, a narrative about
the life of Nemināth.
27. Hindu renunciation includes first the renunciation of fire, followed by a ritual
death and funeral, the statement of the intention to renounce (prais.a), the receipt of the
symbols of the renouncer state (begging bowls, staff, water pot, and special clothes)
(Olivelle 1992, 82–98).
28. For example, the story of Mahāvı̄r delaying his renunciation because of his
concern that his renunciation would cause his parents suffering is given as the valid
reason for why he did not renounce until after their deaths (Kalpa Sūtra 4: 92–94).
29. The Hindu renouncer is a liminal being who is both polluted by virtue of being
“dead” and auspiciously powerful by virtue of his manifestation of the ascetic ideal and,
perhaps, even his resemblance to God (usually Śiva) (Olivelle 1992, 69 n. 16, 81, 92–94,
161–167). I am exploring the restrictions of mendicant interactions with certain auspi-
cious rites (weddings, for example) as a possible location for the sense of potential
inauspiciousness, but on the whole Jains feel that mendicants are always auspicious,
and their blessings and interactions are sought at any time.
30. For example, when mendicants die, their corpses are returned to the laity to be
prepared and cremated (Holmstrom 1988, 23; Shāntā 1997, 567; Vallely 2002, 135).
Mendicants do not perform any rites associated with funerals, memorial worship, or
widowhood. In the early twentieth century, the corpses of mendicants were buried, which
mirrors the Hindu renunciation discourse of the funeral having already been performed
and removes the violence of fire for Jains (Laidlaw 1995, 202). Philosophically, since Jains
believe in immediate rebirth and in the primacy of the soul, the abandoned body holds no
special meaning, especially for mendicants. Lay Jains, too, attach relatively modest sig-
nificance to the body or ashes of the deceased; for example, they do not necessarily ritually
dispose of the ashes, nor do they perform the rites of śrāddha.
31. This, of course, does not mean that mendicants have no ties to their families
after renunciation. It is common to see members of a family who renounce together and
then travel together. Vallely (2002, 106) and I have both observed fairly close ties
between renouncers and their natal families. Likewise, Jain mendicants certainly do
interact in ordinary social intercourse as they advise lay Jains on topics ranging from
marriage, children, business ventures and, of course, lay religiosity.
32. N. K. Singhi (1991, 148–151) likens all Jain processions to weddings, in part on
the basis of the shared use of the term varghodā for their processions. In my observation,
Jains also used the term julūs yātra for Jain processions, and in the context of weddings
most often used the term barāt for the groom’s procession. The satı̄ procession of
Bālāsatı̄mātā was termed a julūs, as well, showing the intersecting notions of procession
(Bālā Satı̄ Mātā Lı̄lāmrt 1995, 37).
_
33. The satı̄ cannot show interest in dying as a satı̄ beforehand, because that would
imply a desire for her husband’s death (Harlan 1992, 108–109), but after she hears
about her husband’s death her sat demands the vow.
34. The handprints of satı̄mātās are central to their iconic representations and are
venerated. The collections of handprints at Bikaner and Jodphur are an extremely visible
sign of the historic practice and ongoing veneration of satı̄mātās in the region. See
Weinberger-Thomas (2000, 52–53) for a discussion of the satı̄mātā’s handprint and
plates showing them. Footprints, though less common than handprints, have also
served as a symbolic representation of the satı̄mātā (Noble and Sankhyan 1994, 348 and
380, plate IVB).
35. Those living satı̄mātās whose deaths are prevented or disrupted cannot return
to their homes; instead, they must find a new place to live–often at the edge of town or
near the cremation grounds. Bālāsatı̄mātā is reported as having said at this moment that
once she left the threshold of the house, she could never return (Bālā Satı̄ Mātā Lı̄lāmrt
_
1995, 32).
36. Major (2007) includes descriptions of satı̄s, starting with the Greek account
from 316 bce through the Moghul and British colonial periods. If these accounts
included the sati’s procession, they described her distribution of jewelry, which seems to
have been a nearly universal practice (Major 2007, 11, 23, 36, 41, 42, 48, 52, 184, 276).
37. Even the commemorative photos from an ordination have photographs of the
initiate dressed as a bride with henna, wedding sari, and jewelry. Thus the young
woman is remembered visually as a bride, rather than a nun. Of course, she cannot be
represented as a nun before her ordination, but the photos are clearly positing her
auspiciousness rather than her ascetic impulse; she is not shown sitting in meditation
with a rosary, as I saw in devotional portraits of women who perform great fasts
(tapasvı̄).
38. Vallely writes of the ordination rite among Terāpanthı̄s where the renouncer is
shaved (except for a tuft of hair) before the final procession, and therefore does not have
the loose hair during that procession, though she looks in all other ways like a bride.
39. Men who take ordination in the Terāpanthı̄ order still wear the headdress of a
groom (Vallely 2002, 91) suggesting to me that the visual imagery for men is less
problematic because the rite of renunciation more closely mimics a young man’s
wedding than a young woman’s.
40. Holmstrom (1988, 23) argues that in contrast to the language of death in
Hindu renunciation, Terāpanthı̄ ordination is exclusively based in the wedding imagery
and auspiciousness. Terāpanthı̄ Śvetāmbar Jain nuns likewise take their last bath and
dress for their ordination in a wedding sari (usually red and gold), wearing henna on
their hands and feet, covered in jewelry, and with a saffron mark on their forehead.
Holmstrom’s descriptions of Terāpanthı̄ ordination do not foreclose my interpretation
of the ordination as a satı̄ procession.
41. Even in Terāpanthı̄ ordination, where the young woman’s hair is shaved before
her final procession to her ordination, her hair is the object of particular attention–it is
carefully bathed with auspicious substances before being removed (Holmstrom 1988,
20; Vallely 2002, 91).
42. These red footprints are then studied for signs—in particular, the connection
of the ball and heal prints—of coming prosperity. The cloth is then stored in the family
storehouse. Thanks to Anastasia Piliavsky for a description of this rite. In this rite, the
image of the gharlaksmı̄ is clear.
˙
43. Waghorne (1994, 166) includes the visual marker of the royal ring. Royal
funeral processions show the king seated in a sedan chair wearing his regalia; this
permits the people to have a final darśan of the king, but the deceased king is not
understood to bestow blessings during the procession. Other exceptional people—
nobility, ascetics, those who have great-grandsons, and so on–are processed to their
cremation (Balzani 2003, 37–39). In one case, I observed the Jain initiate being carried
from the chariot to the stage where her ordination was to occur; this bears a similarity to
the carrying of the Nepali Kumaris by their fathers (Allen no date, plates 18 and 25). In
other contexts, when the Kumari is carried in a palanquin or chariot (Allen no date,
30–31 and plate 9), it most clearly resembles an image procession. For a fascinating
contrast to Indian kingly processions, see Kipling’s (1998) examination of the ritual
signs of medieval English royal processions.
44. In Jain worship, the “offerings” that are made are more properly understood as
renounced objects, and as such are not taken back as prasād. In fact, Jains scrupulously
avoid any accidental injesting of these renounced offerings. Thus, the collection of
the materials distributed at an ordination procession significantly differs from the ways
that Jains usually interact with renounced objects.
45. Sthānakavāsı̄ Śvetāmbar nuns are referred to as mahāsatı̄s after their ordina-
tion, suggesting a more overt link between the discourses.
46. Jai pandivannai cukāi nemi/jı̄viya juvvan.u jalan.i jalemi. Vaudeville (1986, 103)
_
renders this line: “If Nemi is not true to his word then I’ll give up both youth and life.”
However, Vaudeville’s translation for some reason does not include the language of
flames and burning in the verse.
47. The same verse is translated by Bhupendra Trivedi (Neminath, 22) as: “Says
Rajal: ‘Enjoying the favour of my husband, I have lived a happy married life during my
past eight births. Even then, I don’t feel satisfied. If now I have to live, I shall live and die
only with my husband. In this birth and future births, Nemi alone will be my shelter.’”
48. This speech also evokes the moment when a satı̄ recalls her past deaths with
her husband.
49. I can only date this text by linking it to those of Śubhavijay’s other works,
which are dated. I use the term trope advisedly because, though the narrative literature
and verbal accounts speak of the joining of the two halves of the body again (after the
language of Hindu marriage, which makes the women the left half of the man’s body),
in practice there are attempts to isolate the satı̄mātā’s ashes (Weinberger-Thomas 2000,
81) and to venerate those items which were hers alone (veils, jewelry, bone fragments).
50. banı̄ prı̄t te sādi anant bhannge_ _
bhelān_ thayān.
_
51. They died on Asadh sud 8.
52. dı̄ks.ā laı̄ne kāraj kı̄dhu jhatpat pote keval lı̄dhu.
_ _ _
53. In the folktale of “Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon” associated with the
Som Amasya fast (Narayan 1997, 29–34) there is a parallel to both the interstitial status
of Rājul and also a bridge to thinking about other women who stand at the threshold of
identities. In the folktale, the husband dies on the fourth circumambulation of the
wedding fire, leaving his bride “stranded, both virgin and widow, at the shores of
auspicious married life” (Narayan 1997, 34).
54. Harlan (1996, 231–232) questions whether the persistent resistance to Satı̄
Godāvarı̄’s wish to die as a satı̄ may be linked to her identity as a Vaisnav. To what extent
˙˙
does Rājul’s Jainness function as a barrier to her satı̄vrat? In a sense, we might see the
adherence to Jain values as preventing her from immolation in much the same way that
Hindu satı̄vratās were locked up, stopped by police, or prevented by pollution.
55. The visual markers of Jain renunciation (white clothes, bald head, staff,
begging bowls, and cloth broom) differ from those of Hindu renouncers in part by
their very clear and consistently recognizable Jain identity.
56. Noble and Sankhyan (1994, 363); Courtright (1995, 36–37 and fig. 2); Wein-
berger-Thomas (2000, figs. 15, 17, and 18). Jinas are sometimes represented in their
kingly form by applying silver “armor” and crowns or by applying designs directly on the
surface of the images, but these adornments are not carved in stone (as Rājul’s are).
Rājul’s surface adornments evoke those of the goddesses rather than those of the
siddhas; they are not reminiscent of the adornments of any other siddha images in Jain
temple culture.
57. Veneration of Rājı̄matı̄, at least in her role as the teacher of Rathanemi in the
cave, is evidenced as early as the fourteenth century Vividhatı̄rthakalpa. In describing
the ritual practices recommended for pilgrimage to Mount Girnār, a brief description of
Rājı̄matı̄’s cave is included: “Crouch down and go one hundred paces from the Rājamatı̄
cave: there are a quicksilver well, a black-spotted creeper, a jewelled image of Rājı̄matı̄,
Ambā, and various herbs” (Cort 1993, 252). In the Ujjayanta Stava dedicated to
describing Mount Girnār, it is written: “Who does not exclaim praise inside the cave
Rājı̄matı̄, where Rathanemi, having descended, went from the wrong path to the good
path? Performing pūjā, bathing, gifting, and performing asceticism here are causes of
the pleasure of liberation for good people” (Cort 1993, 254).
58. See note 11 in this chapter. “Those who will sing and recite, and those who
listen, they will get all their wishes. Those who meditate in their heart on this
enlightened one (siddha) [Rājul], they will surely marry such an auspicious bride. . . . the
fifth day of the light half of the month Sravan is special. . . . Great people who say these
slokas out of devotion, attain great fame” (Nemanāthno Saloko 2000, 77–78, 80).
59. The Saubhāgya Pañcamı̄ fast, though it starts on Jñān Pañcamı̄ (Kārtak bright
fifth) requires a full fast on Śrāvan bright fifth (commonly called Nāg Pañcamı̄ by Jains,
˙
though these observances were never linked to the Hindu festival of snake worship)
rather than on Jñān Pañcamı̄, when the easier one-sitting fast (ekāsanā) is sufficient.
In Jain fasts, the most important day is usually marked by the most strenuous fast,
marking Śrāvan bright fifth as the center of the fast.
˙
60. “Those who meditate in their heart on this enlightened one (siddha) [Rājul]”
receive a variety of benefits, including marital happiness and great fame. Even though
Jains worship guardian goddesses for well-being, most notably Padmāvatı̄, at weddings
the blessings are derived from lineage goddesses rather than these Jain guardian
goddesses.
61. Although most Jain cundadı̄ songs retell the story of Rājul’s wedding day,
_
there was one cundadı̄ song that did not. In Caitanyamālā (1989, 81), there is a
_ _
cundadı̄ song that describes a cundadı̄, and each time it names a feature that feature is
_ _
linked to a matching category within Jain normative discourse (five colors, for example,
are linked with the five beings worthy of worship). However, I never heard this cundadı̄
_
performed.
62. Jains are wary of all-night events because of the potential harm to insects by
the use of lamps.
63. Among Gujarati Hindus and also Jains, Navrātrı̄ is often the time in which
they perform their annual worship of their lineage goddesses, so these two kinds of
goddesses must be seen in concert.
64. One woman told me that the sixteen ornaments of an auspicious married
woman were: (1) henna, (2) red on feet (lākh), (3) toe rings, (4) anklets, (5) gold bangles,
(6) earrings, (7) forehead ornament, (8) armbands, (9) waistband, (10) nose ring,
(11) finger rings, (12) black eyeliner (kājal), (13) red in the part of the hair (sindūr),
_
(14) necklace, (15) perfume, and (16) a red sari. Another listed the sixteen as: (1) forehead
ornament (bindı̄), (2) red in the part of the hair (sindūr), (3) forehead mark (tikko),
_
(4) black eyeliner (kājal), (5) nose ring, (6) necklace, (7) earrings, (8) henna, (9) bangles,
_
(10) armbands, (11) ring with a mirror, (12) hair ornaments, (13) waistband, (14) anklet,
(15) toe ring, and (16) a red sari. A third listed: (1) hair ornaments, (2) pleasant-smelling
perfume (sugandh), (3) forehead mark/ornament (tikkā/bindı̄), (4) black eyeliner (kājal),
_ _
(5) nose ring, (6) earrings, (7) necklace, (8) bangles, (9) armbands, (10) henna, (11) ring/
hand jewelry, (12) red on feet (lākh), (13) anklets, (14) toe rings, (15) waistband, and
(16) a red sari. The lists are not fixed, though they are very similar. Two lists, in common
with many descriptions of decorations, more or less worked from head to feet.
65. Henna is worn by Jain women who are completing long fasts and also by
women who are taking dı̄ksā, presumably to cool their passions, to mark them as
˙
auspicious, and also to alleviate the overheating from dehydration.
66. This song was also published in Svar Sangı̄t Gı̄tamālā (1999, 100).
67. Among Gujarati Hindus of a similar caste and economic status (Kanbis and
Patidars), a wife’s glass bangles are broken if she is widowed (Pocock 1973, 122). In
addition, I never saw any widows wearing glass bangles, though many wore simple
gold ones.
68. Weinberger-Thomas (2000, 245 n 20) mentions the role of the bracelets and
armbands—cūdo (Gujarati)/cūrā (Hindi)/khanc (Rajasthani)—in marking auspicious
_
wifehood.
69. A woman’s veil (odhn.ı̄) is an object of erotic fantasy for both women and men,
_
as represented in the use of the veil image for intimacy in Rajasthani folk songs (Raheja
and Gold 1994, 47–52). In my observations, Jains shared the eroticization of the veil
(odhn.ı̄) and extended that to other terms: chı̄r, dupatta, and so on; but the term used for
_
the wedding veil and the veil of goddesses (cundadı̄) was not invoked in their erotic word
_
play. The cundadı̄ is a sign of auspiciousness and blessing and is not linked to the
_
worldly discourse of mundane sexuality. That said, the cundadı̄ is certainly evoked in the
_
imagery of weddings, which carry a special kind of supermundane sexuality.
70. I also found the lyrics to this veil song in Abhinav Stavanāvalı̄ (2002, 340).
71. At a daughter’s wedding, the bridal veil of a daughter-in-law (bhābhı̄) or the
bride’s mother (herself a daughter-in-law) will be used for the lineage goddess worship,
though the daughter will wear the veil given by her husband’s family during the
ceremony itself.
72. This song’s refrain focuses on Rājul’s auspicious door-garland–the site of her
abandonment, under which she will pass on her way to her ordination.
73. Toran.thı̄ Var Jāy; I also found this text entitled, Toran.thı̄ bhale jāy in an Añcal
Gacch stavan collection that was owned by a member of Shivajinagar’s congregation,
Caitanyamālā (1989, 125).
_
74. jyotamāthı̄ jyot pragatay re.
_
75. ajavālu thāy.

_
76. Flames (jyot) are not invoked in Jain renunciation discourse, nor are they part
of devotional lyric. Though lamps figure in Jain devotional lyric they are the controlled
lamps (dı̄pa or dı̄pāk) that are associated with Jain worship rather than the flame itself
with its potential heat and passion.
77. Interestingly, none of the satı̄s had fasted to death, either, which could be a kind
of substitute for self-immolation. This parallel is subject to much political tension, as
satı̄ supporters point to the Jain practice’s legal status as evidence of perceived favorit-
ism (for example, see the article in Hinduism Today (December 1987) in Major 2007,
372–374), while Jains argue that their practice is different (Tukol 1976), because it is
about dispassionate nonaction rather than passionate acting (as the satı̄’s death is so
clearly portrayed by Hindus and in satı̄ narratives as the act of an impassioned agent).
For a compelling analysis of the teleological differences between Jain fasting to death
and sati self-immolation, see Laidlaw (2005, 191–194). Thus, it is not surprising that
those women who are named satı̄s do not fast to death.
78. See Kelting (forthcoming b) for a discussion of Jain tellings of the story of Nala
_
and Damayantı̄.
79. Rājul attains liberation in this very lifetime as a siddha, so her passion is not
seen as a bar to her perfection.
CHAPTER 6
1. I was told this by both mendicants and devout lay Jains who hope to create a
community of monks and nuns whose area of travel focuses in the region. Maharashtra
has a growing Jain population, but relatively few mendicants (compared to Gujarat or
Rajasthan) are available for the rainy season retreats.
2. Another way that young Jain women have used the imaginary of nunhood to
assert their selfhood is to use the threat, if you will, of renunciation as leverage.
3. See Fohr (2001) for a discussion about the importance to Jains and to nuns of
the respectability of Jain nunhood.
4. Men, when choosing ordination, must also choose to leave home, where they
otherwise would have lived out their whole lives (Vallely 2002, 237–238). The question
of separation from one’s family, then, is far more consequential for men who
renounce than it is for women. When women renounce, their experience of separation
is no more momentous than it would be if they married and left for their in-law’s
house.
5. The dichotomy that nuns posit of the worldly laywoman and the world-
transcending nun is problematic, as laywomen certainly perform rituals to the end of
world transcendence, and nuns are required to interact with the worldly, both in terms
of lay-mendicant interaction and also in the provision for others within the renouncer
orders. Khandelwal, Hauser, and Gold (2006) pull together a set of essays on women and
renunciation in South Asia, which describe a complex engagement between renouncers
and worldly life; this engagement belies the claims within the male-dominated
renunciation discourse of complete separation from society. Laidlaw (1995, 230–239)
examines the complex reversal found when highly ascetic Jain laymen are able to
perform greater austerities than monks who must engage in worldly or institutional
activities.
6. Cort (2001b) has an extensive analysis of the intersection between what he
terms the ideology of moksa mārg and the realm of well-being. This understanding of
˙
the interconnectedness of these two discourses has been instrumental for my thinking
in general and particularly in this chapter.
7. A young woman must learn to cook several dishes before she is married. It is
expected that new wives will bring with them a number of new menu items as well as
being able to make the staples of Gujarati Jain cooking: tea, lentils (dāl), rice, flat breads
_
(rotlı̄ and khākhrā), and a few vegetable dishes. The more complex dishes–sweets, foods
for days when Jains eat restricted diets, non-Gujarati foods adjusted to conform to Jain
restrictions–are not expected of a new bride, but her ability to make these sorts of foods
contributes to her attractiveness as a daughter-in-law and makes her popular when she
is first married.
8. It is a woman’s responsibility to remove herself from a space or to move aside
when unknown men arrive in the house or when they are menstruating. Most house-
holds attempt to make this easier for women by allocating particular spaces, often out of
the flow of traffic, to menstruating women.
9. Young women also link saris with older women and Gujarati-style saris with
conservative and/or traditional social values. The ability to wear salwār kamı̄z is seen as
a sign that one’s mother-in-law is tolerant and modern, and the wearing of a sari in the
“Bombay style” with the end of the sari thrown over the left shoulder and hanging in the
back is a sign of modernity and urban style. However, at weddings and other events
where Jain and Gujarati identity are being marked and celebrated, women tend to wear
Gujarati-style saris, with the end of the sari brought forward over the right shoulder and
tucked into the waist displaying the design, even if they never do at other times. For
Marwaris, I observed the same trend with wearing ghāgharo colı̄ (skirt, blouse, and a
half-sari) at religious events and weddings but not on normal days. However, there is
some resistance in Pune to women wearing salwār kamı̄z outside the home or as they
age because of its strong associations with college students or Panjabı̄, Sikh,
or Muslim women.
10. Young unmarried Jain men did internalize the idea of their own bodies as a site
of evaluation. I found that during the time between the start of the search for a bride and
the completion of the wedding young men commonly discussed and worried about
their bodily appearance–height, skin color, hair, general attractiveness, and so on.
Negative personal evaluations were introduced and assurances granted in ways similar
to those of young women, but for young women dress, makeup, and jewelry can be used
more effectively to compensate for perceived flaws.
11. The ambivalence that Jains felt about the display of young women at wedding
fairs contrasted with the socially sanctioned and celebrated display of women who fast;
fasting women are proven (by their fast) to be virtuous, and their virtue is untouched by
the gaze of community members and outsiders who come to watch the fast-breaking
parades. These Jain women’s bodies are displayed as the iconic representation of Jain
216 NOTES TO PAGE 148
ethics and religious values (Kelting 2001b, 48–59). The most prominent displays are
those associated with ordinations and with fast-breaking ceremonies. I have written in
chapter 5 about the form of the ordination parade and its resonance with the procession
of a satı̄mātā. The fast-breaking parades, on the other hand, invoke the symbols of
auspicious wifehood but not the marriage rite. The fasters are dressed as auspicious
wives, with their saris covering their bound or braided hair, their wedding jewelry
displayed prominently, and often with a wedding veil over the sari. In one fast-breaking
parade, I observed that even women I knew to be unmarried were dressed as if they were
wives. For example, in a 2001 fast-breaking parade, one unmarried young woman wore
a wedding veil and carried the brass lamp that a groom’s mother carries in his wedding
procession, marking her as an auspicious wife (saubhāgyavatı̄). When she asked me to
take her picture, she teased me that seeing her dressed this way would help me get used
to the idea that soon she would be married and sent away from the neighborhood.
Throughout, the fasters are the objects of the community’s gaze (and the gaze, too, of
non-Jains), but they do not interact with the onlookers; the fasters are silent, disengaged
icons of virtuous wifehood.
12. The only unmarried young men who are permitted to attend are those who are
going to present themselves on stage to the audience for consideration. Unmarried
women who are not presenting themselves on stage may attend, suggesting that the
controls on access are about the male gaze and unmarried women. Though ideally the
married men are not evaluating the women in ways that could be deemed sexual, in my
experience, comments on attractiveness by these married men were common, and
some ogling certainly occurred.
13. The wedding registry is a book that attempts to include all the eligible
unmarried Jain men and women with biographical details and contact information;
many attendees come primarily to get a copy of this book. In a fruitful conversation
early in this project, John Cort suggested that these wedding registries may arise out
of Jain community directories that Jains have used to identify potential marriage
mates. These registries are now used to keep track of marriageable youth in the
community and, unlike the community directories, they are organized by the potential
mates rather than by heads of household. Organizations like Marwari Agarwal Ma-
hasabha were founded to facilitate finding marriage partners within one’s own caste
(Hardgrove 2004, 206). This is a problem both within India and, perhaps even
more, among Jain communities outside of India. Wedding lists and advertisements
are now a standard feature of Jain print magazines, on-line magazines, and
community Web sites.
14. Ironically, for young men the display is even more foreign, as they rarely have
performed rituals that would have them put on display. But for young men to look too
embarrassed works against them, because they are expected to look confident and
manly regardless of how uncomfortable they feel with being on display.
15. Pallu is actually the term for money a groom gives his bride, but it intimately
linked to the pallav (the end of a sari) where a woman might tie up her personal money.
In found that Jains called this ritual pallu and pallav interchangeably, but with a slight
preference for pallu in writing. This is not to be confused with the rites of filling the
pallav of a sari (called kholābharan.) associated with the blessings on married daughters
and pregnant women.
16. Jains seem to have an uneasy relationship with vermilion (sindūr). I have not
observed or been told of the rite of sindūr dan being performed at Jain weddings, and on
occasions Jain men and women have expressed distaste or disgust when describing
what they called a “Hindu” ritual. Few Jain women wore sindūr in the part of their hair,
either. Those that did wore a much less visible amount than the Maharashtrian Hindu
women I observed in Pune, and were often the more conservative and less sophisticated
women. Among young urban Jains, the wearing of sindūr was seen as being unso-
phisticated and “village-y”; they used the term ghātı̄, which refers to those who come
from the villages in the Western Ghats, and which is used pejoratively to mean Marathi-
speaking Hindus. An informal survey of other scholars’ photographs in books on
Jainism seem to suggest that few Jains wear sindūr in the parts of their hair in
Gujarat, either.
17. In the few opportunities I have had to sit with a bride on the night of the
consummation of her marriage, I observed that the groom’s aunts and married sisters
usually chose the sari that the bride would wear to the hotel with her husband. The bride
in each case I observed sat quietly and frankly exhausted throughout the proceedings,
and ceded the control of her appearance to her new relatives. To overread that compli-
ance would be to miss the point, which centers on the transfer of her body into the
control of her husband’s family from her parent’s control during these rituals. One bride
I later knew well told me that by time the wedding was over, she was tired and glad that
someone else was making decisions for her. This was just one more step in the ritual
inscription of her body as wifely.
18. The self-presentation of the Jain community as modern, urban, and
middle-class contributes to their pride in the education of their daughters, which
in turn makes it hard for a family to marry off a daughter who is insufficiently
educated. This can be a status marker for Gujaratı̄s vis-à-vis Marwaris or Jains vis-
à-vis non-Jains; I have heard it invoked in both contexts as evidence of a kind of
cultural superiority.
19. The story of Bharat and Bāhubalı̄ is the central narrative of Jinasena’s Ādipurān.
a. The Ādipurān.a is the most widely venerated text within the Digambar communities
(Dundas 2002, 119–120). Strohl (1990) translates a selection from this key
Digambar text.
20. Shāntā (1997, 610–611) tells of one Terāpanthı̄ nun who took a vow of virginity
to convince her marital and natal families to permit her to renounce. This contrasts with
the fasting for renunciation that marks other narratives. Vallely (2002, 83) distinguishes
the unwavering model of female renunciation from the account of one monk who
presents his renunciation as a surprise to everyone, including himself.
21. During the time period between the public statement of the intention to
renounce and one’s ordination, a young woman is called a dı̄ks.ārthı̄ (one who intends to
take dı̄ksā).
˙
22. Among lay Jains I observed that there is often speculation about unmarried
women who take ordination. The most common negative comments are that her family
did not want to give a dowry for her or that there was something “wrong” with her that
meant no one would marry her. Jain mendicants are sensitive to this criticism and often
elaborate on the marriageability of their cohort before they renounced. This discourse
contrasts with models in which marriage is framed as the fall-back position for
women who are not spiritual enough, strong enough, brave enough, independent
enough, and so on, to renounce.
23. An early version of this discussion of the Updhān vow can be found in Kelting
2006b (195–198).
24. Interestingly, the posadh vow was relatively common among men, with
˙
no sense that they were going to become monks. I found that women rarely took the
one-day vow of posādh, but quite a number took longer vows like the Updhān, in which
˙
they lived like nuns for extended periods of time. The Updhān is first described in the
seventh-century Mahāniśı̄tha Sūtra (III.3.15–36.1).
25. Unmarried women, like mothers-in-law, have less work to do if they have
finished their schooling, and can spare the time for lengthy fasts. Once married,
they will not have the time to perform lengthy fasts for a decade or so. However, this
explanation given to me by only one of the many unmarried women who performed
the fast in Pune.
26. See Cort (2001b, 137); Kelting (2006b, 195–198); Laidlaw (1995, 175–179).
27. Women I spoke with who had completed the Updhān had vowed to perform
the evening confession daily, to eliminate certain foods (mostly store-bought foods)
from their diet, and to fast on the anniversary of their Updhān’s completion.
28. At another Updhān held in 2008 at the same temple near Pune in February
and March, there were twenty unmarried young women, out of which one announced
her intention to renounce at the end of the Updhān; another is actively considering
dı̄ksā; and a third, whose family made her discontinue the Updhān part way through the
˙
vow, has also declared her intention to renounce. I was unable to interview this last
young woman, but another woman at the Updhān with her felt that the young woman’s
family had revoked their permission for her to perform the fast because they were afraid
she would decide to renounce. This is hearsay, certainly, but suggestive of a strategic use
of the Updhān and its potential role as a practice renunciation. There was one young
woman who was already engaged at the time she signed up for the Updhān but
performed the fast because she would not be able to after she was married, and another
young woman who got engaged after she had signed up for the Updhān and decided to
complete the vow “anyway.”
29. Consider that there are 4,225,053 million Jains, and there are only a few more
than eight thousand Jain nuns (in all the orders combined); if we assume half of the
Jains are women, we end up with a figure between 0.003 per cent and 0.004 per cent
becoming nuns.
30. I was unable to ascertain whether they themselves spoke to other performers of
the Updhān about this exploration, but in any case, they would not do so widely.
31. The most significant difference between the benefits of the Updhān and the
Candanbālā fasts center around karma reduction. The Updhān, by virtue of being more
similar to the life of a mendicant, is believed to more effectively reduce karma, but the
Candanbālā fast is a full fast and certainly removes karma. The operative difference is
the extent to which the participants identity with mendicants.
32. Other narratives of satı̄s who never married were rarely told to me or other
laywomen in my presence by laywomen or mendicants. The discourse of anti-wifehood
presented in the stories of virgin nun satı̄s (bāla-brahmacārı̄ satı̄) would, in a sense, be
inappropriate for good wives to focus on. Like the stories in chapter 3, of satı̄s who fix
their bad marriages, most virgin nun satı̄ stories were not told by Jain laywomen in
ritual contexts and devotional songs, and rarely as entertainment. The only spontaneous
tellings I recorded were by young unmarried women, and the only ritual tellings were
that of Rājul and Candanbālā. Nuns did not tell me these stories–though they clearly
found the bāla-brahmacārı̄ narratives powerful for their own identity (Fohr 2001,
78–88, 146–149)–in part, I suspect, because my research focus is on laywomen, I myself
am a married woman, and these satı̄ narratives are not seen as instructive for women
who are married already. The stories of the bāla-brahmacārı̄s provide a discourse for
young women in which the protagonists remain ever childlike. Brāhmı̄ and Sundarı̄,
though they become leaders of the community, are never described as adults. Candan-
bālā is a more complex narrative and character, but even she remains childlike in her
innocence of the potentials of her own sexuality and that of the merchant. The bāla-
brahmacārı̄ narratives are naively free from any sexual threats or, with the exception of
Rājul, any of the unhappiness that may accompany marriage, as I discussed earlier in
the lives of Sulasā, Añjanā, and Subhadrā. Even for the satı̄s who do not actually
experience misfortune, Rohinı̄ and Maynāsundarı̄, the threat of misfortune is a key part
˙ ˙
of the narrative.
33. Although the story begins with Candanbālā as a daughter who becomes a slave,
when young women told the story they often started with the point at which the
merchant finds her in the slave market. This frame excludes the incident in which
Candanbālā is almost sold into prostitution.
34. In contrast to the renunciation coda of many Jain satı̄ narratives, there is a well-
known but rarely told story associated with Candanbālā after her renunciation in which
she is able to save the life of another nun. That said, no one ever told me that story in
conjunction with the story of Candanbālā’s fast and miracle.
35. In my observations, some young women would boast of how they might turn
down suitors or choose their own husband freely (and a few did), but these boasts
seemed more a resistance to the role of passive potential bride rather than claims to
either plans or desires. As marriage arrangements progressed, most ceased to make
these claims, and their speech became more compliant with parental authority. As
Mahmood (2005, 29) argues about Muslim women’s desire to be pious, I read compli-
ance here as a choice rather than as a resignation of choice, because the women who
made these boasts often also explored nunhood seriously and began to speak of desire in
the context of their fiancé.
36. It is a threefold fast; fasters only take water, though some fasters forgo the
water as well for at least the first day.
37. This fast is widely known and included in the next most common fasting
manual, Ārādhanā Tathā Tapavidhi.
38. The miraculous moment in the Candanbālā story is marked by two images: the
chains breaking open to free her, and her beautiful hair instantly growing back. Women
telling the story of Candanbālā or reenacting it as part of the Candanbālā fast, always
made sure to include this detail, drawing attention to the broken chains and the return
of her beauty as the “proof,” as it were, of the efficacy of her meritorious act.
39. Elsewhere I have written about the ways in which the Candanbālā fast super-
imposes the images of the present participants and Candanbālā and Mahāvı̄r (Kelting
2006a).
40. Recording of sermon by Muni Devguptavijayjı̄, Pune, 6 August 2001.
41. The one married woman who performed the fast-breaking almsgiving in front
of the audience did not cry, and Devguptavijay did not draw any attention to her
lack of tears.
42. In Junnar, a painting of Candanbālā includes her standing with her right hand
raised in the bent-elbow blessing associated with satı̄matas, as discussed in chapter 5.
43. Special thanks are due to Heather Hindman for sharing this insight into this
ritual performance with me.
44. The singing contest had ten contestants (eight middle-aged married women,
one older widow, and one unmarried young woman) who each sang a different stavan
focusing on Rājul, mostly veil songs, as discussed in chapter 5.
45. Two of the unmarried young women who competed in the Rājul contest had
also performed the Candanbālā fast in 2001. Interestingly, the judges of the contest
were two young married women who grew up in the congregation and were home
visiting for their first Raksā Bandhan. Both of these women had previously performed
˙
the Candanbālā fast: one in 2000 and the other in 2001. These two young women were
closely allied with nuns before they married, and when they awarded the prizes they
gave first prize to the one young woman who represented Rājul’s renunciation.
46. The one young woman who chose to partially dramatize Rājul as a nun was one
whose close ties with a community of nuns suggested her contemplation of nunhood. For
another who included the renunciation, the melodramatic effects centered around Rājul’s
suffering rather than her subsequent renunciation. After the weeping, wailing, and
singing of the tearful Rājul, her renunciation served as an uninspired denouement; this
young woman, whose weeping went on for a full ten minutes, stood up and announced
over her shoulder as she left that she was going to renounce.
47. Although women learn to tell the history of their weddings and marriages in
accordance with the discourse of wifehood, these young brides did not complain about the
work of wifehood, their mothers-in-law, or the adjustment to their new homes. All of these
complaints are considered normal and would not conflict with the discourse of wifehood;
in fact, these complaints serve as a form of compliance with the discourse of wifehood by
confirming the shared representation of conflict between marital and natal family.
CONCLUSION
1. The Jain wife is not based—as the Hindu wife so often is—on the story of Sı̄tā,
whose companionate relationship with Rāma conflicts with kingly and wifely virtue, but
on the story of Maynāsundarı̄; the effect of this alternative model may be profound for
˙
the ways that Jain wifehood is imagined. However, there are Hindu models in connec-
tion to women’s fasting that suggest something more like a dharmapatnı̄. In one Hindu
folktale associated with the Mother Ten festival (The Brahmin’s Daughter and the Five
Bachelors) collected by Gold, we see a direct link between the wife and the goddess
Laksmı̄ (Gold 1995b, 439–443). A new bride enters the house of the Five Bachelors, and
˙
because she bears the blessings of Mother Ten and because of her status as a new bride,
she is able to bring prosperity to the poor family. Like a dharmapatnı̄, she also corrects
her husband and his brothers’ wrong behavior, which works directly to their worldly
benefit.
2. The transitions between identities are certainly no less complex or poten-
tially difficult for women in other locations. Jain women often listened with
concern as I juggled research with family and my personal passion (music). When
they spoke to me on the phone of family celebrations, religious festivals, mandal
˙_ _
performances, pilgrimages, and visits to their parents, I spoke of the work day,
progress on my book, my conferences, and visits with family squeezed in between.
I have missed events in my family and time with my husband and son in order to
pursue my career. These are real costs, about which the women I know in India
felt sympathy. Many of the younger wives (and some of the middle-aged wives) had
worked outside the home before their marriages, and though some spoke of how
they missed the freedom and the money, few spoke with real regret. Notions of
loss of freedom were expressed by men as well, for as they marry and age, their
worlds become increasingly circumscribed by work and their family and its ob-
ligations. But the pleasures of married life were extolled regularly in casual and
spontaneous conversations.
3. In 2008, the Nemi Vacan was performed in conjunction with the morning
sermon at the request of the monk who would otherwise not hear the recition (men and
women perform the pratikraman separately). Even with the change of time, it was the
˙
most widely attended event after the celebrations at Paryusan and the temple
˙ ˙
anniversary.
4. The Saubghāgya Pañcamı̄ fast requires a fast on the fifth day of the bright half of
each month for five years and five months. Though the fast is often started on Jñān
Pañcamı̄ (Kārtak bright fifth) the instructions always suggest that the participants be
sure to perform a full fast (no food or water) on Śrāvan bright fifth, marking that day as
the one on which the greatest benefits for the fast are gained.
5. The following is an accounting of the Nemanāthno Saloko’s structure by verse
number:
1–12. Nemi’s birth and childhood

13–19. Krsna’s attempt to convince Nemi to marry
_˙ ˙
20–30. the speeches of Nemi’s sisters-in-law
31–32. a short speech by Rādhā
33–38. the gifts to the bride
39–43. Nemi’s decision to marry
44–60. the description of the wedding procession of Nemi up to and including

a four-verse description of his first sight of Rājul dressed for her
wedding to his moment of renunciation
61–64. Nemi’s renunciation
65–72. Rājul’s lament
73–76. Rājul’s renunciation and their liberation
77–82. the benefits arising of the recitation of this text
6. Jains believe Nemināth to have been a cousin-brother of Krsna, and as such

_˙ ˙
Krsna’s wives Rukamanı̄ and Satyabhāmā would be his sisters-in-law.
_ ˙ ˙ ˙
7. The twelve restraints are lay vows taken in order to mark one as an especially
pious Jain. See Laidlaw (1995, 174–189) for a description of these vows. These are
similar to vows taken by mendicants, and they are illustrative of Jain liberation
ideologies contextualized within lay life. It is notable that the first image focuses on
how Nemi’s wife will be the upholder of Jain liberation-directed practice in the home.
Glossary
Aksaynidhi a fifteen-day one-sitting fast performed in nine cy-

˙
fast cles over four and a half years, during which the
worship of knowledge is central; this fast is believed
to lead to familial prosperity
Añjanāsundarı̄ a Jain satı̄; she is the mother of Hanumān and is a
˙
character in the Jain Rāmāyana
_
Antarāyakarm “obstacle karma removal pūjā” and its liturgy; per-
Nivārananı̄ formed to remove the specific karma that prevents
˙
pūjā one from worshiping correctly; often performed in
the name of a deceased relative
anumodan appreciation of the good acts of others; a source of
merit
āvaśyaka originally, the six daily obligations of a Jain mendi-
cant; later lay versions have also been created
āyambil bland food (made with no oil, no spices, no dairy,
and no green vegetables) associated with the Olı̄ fast
˙
Āyambil Olı̄ a series of nine one-sitting āyambil fasts performed
˙
in imitation of the satı̄ Maynāsundarı̄ as part of the
˙
Åyambil Olı̄ festival during either Caitra bright 7–15
˙
or Āso bright 7–15; this fast is widely believed to
protect one’s saubhāgya
224 GLOSSARY
bālā-brahmacārı̄ someone who has been celibate since birth; usually

refers to monks and nuns who take ordination be-
fore they have been married
bārahmāsā a poetic form popular in medieval north India in
which each verse is associated with the aesthetic
experience of each of the twelve months of the
year; usually love poetry
bhāv sentiment; most commonly, bhakti bhāv—the sen-
timent of devotion
bhāvanā Jain devotional singing sessions usually performed
at night in a temple, but also performed in Jain
homes to mark celebrations
bolı̄ the practice of auctioning off the privilege to per-
form certain parts of a Jain ritual; the auction itself
Brahmı̄-Sundarı̄ a pair of Jain satı̄s; these two sisters, who exemplify
two experiences of the choice to renounce; their
story is part of the famous story of their brothers,
Bharata and Bāhubali; they are the daughters of the
first Jina of this era, Ādināth
Candanbālā a Jain satı̄; best known for her miraculous almsgiv-
ing to Mahāvı̄r and later as the head of the order of
nuns under Mahāvı̄r
Candanbālā fast a three-day full fast in imitation of Candanbālā’s fast
and her subsequent feeding of Mahāvı̄r
caniyā-colı̄ a skirt and blouse combination considered tradition-
˙
al to Gujarat and always worn with the odinı̄—a
half-sari worn over the skirt and blouse—in a style
similar to the Gujarātı̄-style sari
caturvidh saṅgh the fourfold community of male mendicants, fe-
male mendicants, laymen, and laywomen
cundadı̄/cunarı̄ veil; in particular the ornate veils worn by a bride
˙
during her wedding and offered to satı̄mātās and
other goddesses as part of their worship; the wed-
ding veil of a satı̄mātā is ritually burned twelve days
after her death
GLOSSARY 225
cundadı̄ gı̄t “veil songs”; devotional songs that usually center

˙
around the image of the veil; in Jain contexts,
these are almost always dedicated to the Jain satı̄,
Rājul; in Hindu contexts, they may be dedicated to
lineage goddesses or the goddesses worshiped at
Navrātrı̄
derāsar “Jain temple” in Gujarātı̄ and Mārvādı̄ (mandir in
˙
Hindı̄ or Marāthı̄)
dharm religion or duty
dharmapatnı̄ literally “a religious wife”; a wife who is not only
virtuous generally but also teaches her husband and
his family correct religious praxis and generally in-
creases the religious activity in the home
Digambar “sky clad”; one of the sects of Jainism, popular
primarily in the south and parts of Rajasthan;
though very important in many parts of Maharash-
tra, these Jains are the smallest group in Pune
dı̄ksā the rite of initiation that makes a Jain layperson into
˙
a mendicant; cupı̄ dı̄ksā is doing so in secret, with-
˙
out the permission of one’s family
dı̄ksārthı̄ one who has the intention of taking dı̄ksā, a mendi-
˙ ˙
cant-to-be
gacch a school of Jain mendicants; a further subdivision
within Jainism of mendicants and their followers; in
Pune, as in Jainism as a whole, the largest was the
Tapā Gacch, though there were also Khartar Gacch
Jains in Pune’s Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjāk community
gharlaksmı̄ literally, “household Laksmı̄”; literally, a daughter-
˙ ˙
in-law who brings prosperity and well-being to the
home
ghūṅghat the women’s practice of showing deference to one’s
˙
senior affinal relatives and guests by covering one’s
hair or hair and face with a veil
gı̄t song, especially welcome songs (svāgatam gı̄t) or
fasting songs (tapasya gı̄t)
226 GLOSSARY
Indra/Indrāni the king and queen of the gods, paradigmatic Jain

˙
devotees
Jina “victor,” one of the omniscient teachers of who re-
vitalizes the Jain religion; there have been twenty-
four Jinas in the present era, and there will be a
future cycle of twenty-four when the next era of time
begins
jyotı̄/jot flame; a spontaneously self-illuminating flame; a
flame that is used to symbolize a satı̄mātā for wor-
ship; the rite of worshiping a satı̄mātā as a flame
karma “action”; in the Jain context, the material substance
that adheres to one’s soul and prevents it from rising
to the abode of the liberated; specific forms of karma
determine the future destiny of a soul
Khartar Gacch a lineage of Jain mendicants popular in Rajasthan;
marked by female mendicants giving sermons and
by the worship of the Dādāgurus
kuldevı̄ lineage goddess worshiped for the protection of the
family annually and at rites of passage
kuṅkum a red powder made from turmeric and alum used in
˙
a variety of auspicious rites, usually to mark the
forehead of those receiving blessings, but also used
to make handprints and footprints of women in
rituals of crossing the threshold of their homes
mahāpūjā great worship ceremonies; formal pūjās understood
to require a sādhu’s presence
mahāsatı̄ “a great satı̄”; often used when telling the story of a
single satı̄ to show veneration; title used for nuns
among Sthānakavāsı̄ Jains
Mahāvı̄r the twenty-fourth and last Jina of this era
Mallināth the nineteenth Jina; for Śvetāmbars, a woman
māmā maternal uncle, who is central to the arrangement
of one’s marriage and to the wedding rites; tradi-
tionally one’s mother’s place of refuge and in emer-
gencies—for example, if one has no brother or one
GLOSSARY 227
has been rejected by one’s natal family, the last

refuge of a woman
mantra formulic short prayer for recitation
mārg path
Mārvādı̄ people or things from the region Mārvād (Marwar)
˙ ˙
in southern Rajasthan; a major ethnic group within
the Jain community
Maynāsundarı̄ a Jain satı̄; best known as the dharmapatnı̄ of the
˙
mytho-historical King Śrı̄pāl, whose Jain devotion
miraculously cures her husband of leprosy; Śrı̄pāl
and Maynā are the protagonists of a popular medie-
˙
val narrative, the Śrı̄pāl Rājāno Rās
moksa liberation; release from the cycle of rebirth
˙
moksa mārg the ideology that centers around the pursuit of liber-
˙
ation; often the ideological stance of Jain normative
texts, especially those intended for renouncers
Mumbaı̄ Bombay
Mūrtipūjāk those who do worship to images: a major sect within
Śvetāmbar Jainism; the two others are Sthānakavāsı̄
and Terapanthı̄, neither of whom accept image wor-
ship
Navkār mantra the basic Jain mantra recited as part of all rituals; it
honors the five worshipful beings: the Jinas,
liberated ones, mendicant teachers, mendicant lea-
ders, and all mendicants
Navpad Olı̄ fast a series of nine Āyambil Olı̄ fasts followed by a
˙ ˙
Navpad pūjā; an efficacious and popular fast for
one’s husband’s health
Navpad/Navpadjı̄ another name for the siddhacakra
Navpad pūjā a formal liturgy for worship of the siddhacakra per-
formed to mark the end of the Olı̄ fasts
˙
Navrātrı̄ the “nine nights” of the goddess, a Hindu festival
honoring nine manifestations of the goddess
Nemināth the twenty-second Jina of this era
228 GLOSSARY
Olı̄ “line”; usually refers to a nine-day Jain festival (prob-

˙
ably created to match Navrātrı̄) during which there
is emphasis on fasting for saubhāgya, especially the
Áyambil Olı̄
˙
paccakhān “intention”; public statement of the intention to fast
pāp “sin”; those actions which lead to the accumulation
of bad karma
Paryusan an eight-day festival near the end of the rainy season
˙ ˙
during which there is increased lay-mendicant in-
teraction, fasting, and religious activity generally
pativratā a dedicated wife; a woman who has vowed to be
dedicated to her husband—in particular, to protect
him and to be faithful
phāgu a poetic form that centers around the aesthetic expe-
rience of the four months of the rainy season; usu-
ally used for love poetry and devotional verse
posadh a formal but temporary vow made by laity to live like
˙
a mendicant for a fixed period of time
praksal the blessed liquid from Jain worship of yantras—
˙
principally of the siddhacakra—understood to be
healing and protective
prasād the blessed remains of worship to deities
pratikraman the rite of confession and expiation of sins
˙
pūjā “worship”; generally, the performance of worship
liturgies
punya “merit”; the karmic result of meritorious acts as
˙
opposed to pāp or sin
purdah literally, “curtain”; usually refers to the practice of
a physical separation of the sexes, particularly
between women and men who are not related
rajoharan the cloth broom carried by Jain mendicants; its
˙
acceptance is the signifier of ordination
Rājul/Rājı̄matı̄ a Jain satı̄; she is best known for her near marriage
to the Jina Nemināth; her renunciation is often cited
as the model for the ordination of nuns
GLOSSARY 229
raksāpotlı̄ a protective wrist amulet blessed by a mantra recited

˙ ˙
by a Jain monk
rās/raso a narrative medieval poetry form widely adopted by
Jain monks for devotional poetry
rātijagā Hindu ritual of staying up at night singing devotion-
al songs to honor deities, performed for familial
protection and at rites of passage
Rohinı̄ a Jain satı̄; principally known because of the popu-
˙
larity of a fast associated with her narrative
Rohinı̄ fast a one-day fast on the rohinı̄ day of each month
˙ ˙
performed for seven years and seven months in
imitation of the Jain satı̄ Rohinı̄
˙
sahagamana “going together with” one’s husband; the rite by
which a satı̄ dies with her husband
sahamarana “dying together with” one’s husband; the rite by
˙
which a satı̄ dies with her husband; also anumarana,
˙
“dying after” one’s husband, often denoting the rite
by which a satı̄ dies with some relic of her husband
(often his turban) after finding out that he has died
and been cremated elsewhere
sajjhāy a Jain devotional hymn genre popular among medi-
eval Jain monks, usually narrative in form
sāmāyik formalized meditation, usually for forty-eight min-
utes
sangh “community” or “congregation”; either the Jains who
worship at a particular temple—articulated through
their presence at the annual congregation feast
or the Samvatsarı̄ Pratikraman—or the sum of all
˙ ˙
Jains
śaktı̄ power; understood to be a feminine principle
salwār kamiz a tunic worn over loose pants; in western India worn
primarily by young women who are not married, in
casual settings
śāsan-devatā the protector deities who, as Jain devotees, protect
the Jinas and assist human Jains
230 GLOSSARY
sat “truth”; inner virtue; in this context, used to describe

the power of a woman’s fidelity that arises when she
manifests herself as a satı̄
satı̄ “a true woman”; usually reserved for devoted wives;
for Hindus often the self-immolated wives of recent-
ly deceased men; for Jains, virtuous women who are
true to their religion and devoted to their husbands,
though they are sometimes in conflict with their
husband’s family
satı̄mātā a satı̄ who has immolated herself on her husband’s
funeral pyre and who, for this reason, is venerated
satı̄vratā a woman who has vowed to die on her husband’s
funeral pyre
saubhāgya state of well-being; usually a woman’s state of being
while she is married to a living man
Saubhāgya Pañcamı̄ a one-day fast on the fifth day of the bright half of
fast each lunar month performed for five years and five
months in order to protect one’s saubhāgya
saubhāgyavatı̄ literally, a fortunate woman; a woman with a living
husband
siddha a liberated soul
siddhacakra a symbolic representation of the nine elements of
Jainism worthy of worship: the Jinas, the liberated
souls, the mendicant teachers, the mendicant lea-
ders, all mendicants, right faith, right knowledge,
right action, and right austerities
Siddhacakra mahapūjā an elaborate formal liturgy based on the worship of
the siddhacakra, which is believed to create ideal
marriages and well-being
sindūr red powder worn in the part of a woman’s hair to
symbolize her status as a married woman with a
living husband; vermilion
sindūr dān the rite of putting sindūr in the part of a newly
married bride by her groom, understood widely to
be a symbolic deflowering of the virgin bride
śrāvak “he who listens”; Jain layman, also Sanskrit
GLOSSARY 231
śrāvikā “she who listens”; Jain laywoman

Śrı̄pāl a mytho-historical king married to the Jain satı̄
Maynāsundarı̄; Śrı̄pāl and Maynā are the protago-
˙ ˙
nists of a popular medieval Jain narrative, the Śrı̄pāl
Rājāno Rās
śrṅgār the marks of auspicious wifehood; they usually
˙
number sixteen, including jewelry (nose ring, ban-
gles, etc.) and makeup (henna, etc.), though the
particulars of the list vary
stavan Jain devotional hymn
Sthānakavāsı̄ sect of Śvetāmbar Jainism that rejects image
worship, founded by Lonka Shah in the twelfth
century
Subhadrā a Jain satı̄ best known for her piety
Sulasā a Jain satı̄ best known for her devotion to her hus-
band and her attempts to teach him Jainism
svayamvara “self-choice” marriage; a rite by which a woman
chooses her husband from a group of assembled
suitors; this rite is usually represented as a royal
perogative, but a symbolic svayamvara in which
the bride garlands (“chooses”) the groom is per-
formed at Jain weddings
Śvetāmbar “white-clad”; the larger of the two major sects of
Jainism, popular primarily in western India from
Rajasthan to Maharasthra; this community is in-
creasing in size in Maharasthra and is the larger
group in Pune; marked by a belief in the ability of
women to attain moksa
˙
tap “austerities”; almost exclusively fasting; includes
various kinds of restrictions: one sitting (ekāsan),
two sitting (beasan), or eating bland foods (āyambil)
Tapā Gacch the largest Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjāk ascetic lineage,
dominant in Maharashtra and in publications
Terāpanthı̄ sect of Śvetāmbar Jainism that rejects image wor-
ship, founded by Muni Bhı̄khanjı̄ in the eighteenth
century; this sect is marked by its devotion to the
232 GLOSSARY
charismatic mendicant leaders and its institution of

partially initiated mendicants
toran door garland; an auspicious garland hung over a
˙
doorway marking and blessing the threshold
Updhān fast a vow to live as a Jain mendicant for a length of time
while performing a one-sitting fast of simple un-
modified foods (nivi); the first vow is for forty-five
days, and there is an elaborate ritual at its comple-
tion; subsequent vows are for shorter periods
upaśray mendicants’ hostel
upvās a full fast with no food at all; if it includes water, it is a
tivihar upvās, such as the eight-day (at.ht.haı̄) fast
or month-long (māskhaman) fast, and if water is omit-
˙
ted, it is a cauvihar upvās, such as the samvatsarı̄ fast or
two-and-a-half day (at.t.ham) fast
varsidān literally, “year-long gifting”; the rite of symbolically
˙
renouncing wealth before a Jain renounces, per-
formed in imitation of Mahāvı̄r’s year of gifting
before he renounced
vāskep a powder of sandalwood and saffron that (after a
sādhu has blessed it) is used in a variety of Jain
worship acts
vidhi ritual instructions
vrat “vow”; for Jains, both Jain vows and Hindu vows
undertaken by Jains
vrat kathā narratives told in association with particular vows
and fasts; often the stories provide a charter for the
vow
yantra a mystical diagram used in worship
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Index
Abu-Lughod, Lila, 26 body, 7, 12, 158–161, 164–170,

Ahearn, Laura, 16, 26, 149, 206 n. 8, 219 n. 33, 219 n. 34,
184 n. 26 220 n. 38
affection, 66, 72, 80, 99 abject, 113–114, 115, 118–119
intimacy, 66, 177–178 display of, 125, 148
private and public inscription on, 144–147, 148–150
markers, 67–68, 70 See also embodiment
rejection of, 68–69. See also love Bourdieu, Pierre, 14–15
agency, 23, 26–31, 55–58, 150–154, Brahmı̄-Sundarı̄, 151–154
169–170, 174, 185 n. 36, 187 n. Buddhism, 30, 38, 59
52 Butler, Judith, 30–31
Añjanāsundarı̄, 57–58, 63–66,
70–71, 73, 195 n. 15 Candanbālā, 7, 12, 158–161, 164–170, 206 n. 8,
anumodan, 39, 40–41, 44, 188 n. 8, 219, n. 32, 219 n. 33, 219 n. 34
188 n. 9 Candanbālā Fast, 8, 13, 49, 143, 158–165, 202 n.
auctions, 89 25, 206 n. 6, 218 n. 31, 220 n. 48
āyambil, 48, 82, 96, 100, 103, 105, celibacy, 7, 66, 70, 92, 157, 183 n. 14, 184 n. 29,
152 187 n. 50, 208 n. 25
Āyambil Olı̄, 8, 41, 48, 79–80, virgin nuns (bālā-brahmacārı̄), 151–152, 206
82–86, _ 90–93, 97, 171–172. See n. 5
also āyambil; fasting; festivals; ceremonies. See confession; mahāpūjās;
Navpad Olı̄) ordination; singing; wedding; worship
_ confession (pratikraman), 8, 12, 14, 39, 49, 86,
˙
Babb, Lawrence A., 5, 8, 10, 25, 109, 92, 156–157, 175, 183 n. 18, 191 n. 30, 193
124, 181 n. 4, 186 n. 46, 191 n. n. 44, 202, n. 20, 203 n. 25, 218 n. 27
25, 206 n. 4 Cort, John E., 5, 6, 35, 39–41, 91, 103, 109, 155,
Bālāsatı̄mātā, 129, 186 n. 42. See 181 n. 4, 182 n. 11, 183 n. 15, 184 n. 23, 193
also satı̄; satı̄mātās n. 43, 194 n. 12, 195 n. 15, 203 n. 26, 212 n.
bārahmāsā, 13, 117–118, 126–127, 57
219 n. 32 couple, 66–67, 69–70, 88, 97–99, 194 n. 10,
Barvosa-Carter, Edwina, 30, 142 196 n. 22, 196, n. 24
246 INDEX
couple (continued) affinal, 19, 64, 67, 147–150, 172, 199 n. 36,
as patrons or sponsors, 42, 79–80, 93, 95, 217 n. 17
97, 99–103, 117, 150, 185 n. 31, 205 n. 37, natal, 67, 85, 148, 152, 158, 171, 175
205 n. 38 See also daughter; daughter-in-law; groom;
Courtright, Paul, 24, 112, 121, 129, 186 n. 41, husband; mother-in-law; sister; sister-in-
208 n. 23 law; wife
cundadı̄/ cunarı̄. See dress fast-breaking ceremonies, 8, 13, 37, 143, 148,
_ gı̄t. See songs
cundadı̄ 157, 160–163, 165, 167
_ fasting, 4, 8, 27, 44–50, 61, 65, 74–76, 89,
daughter, 13, 19, 44, 62, 73, 86, 95, 117, 90–92, 94, 103, 143, 153–154, 156–158,
128, 144–147, 159–160, 165, 173, 190 n. 21, 161–167, 171–173, 175, 190 n. 21, 192 n. 39,
198 n. 36, 213 n. 71, 216 n. 15, 217 n. 18 202 n. 25, 215 n. 11, 218 n. 31
daughter-in-law, 17–18, 43, 63, 70–73, to death, 21, 185 n. 36, 214 n. 77
85, 115, 135, 144, 148–150, 173, 174, 184 n. for happy marriages, 8, 65, 90–92, 93, 97
28, 197 n. 24, 198 n. 32, for health of husband (saubhāgya), 18, 27,
198 n. 36, 205 n. 38, 215 n. 7, 37–38, 47–48, 93, 96, 132
216 n. 15 See also āyambil; Āyambil Olı̄ Fast;
death, 18, 124 Candanbālā Fast; Navpad _Olı̄ Fast; Rohinı̄
_ ˙
satı̄ death, 3, 19, 21–25, 65, 109–110, Fast; Saubhāgya Pañcamı̄ Fast; Updhān
119–122, 125–129, 133, 136–140, 186 n. 41, Fast
205 n. 3, 209 n. 33 fertility, 19, 45, 70–71, 148
and Hindu renunciation, 120 as security, 19–20, 37, 43, 53, 56–69, 70, 72
fasting to death, 21, 185 n. 36, 208 n. 27 as threat to security, 70–72
dharmapatnı̄, 79–80, 84, 85–86, 88–90, 172. See also infertility
See also wives festivals, 4, 8, 37, 82, 87, 183 n. 18, 183 n. 19,
Digambar, 5–6, 182 n. 6, 182 n. 7, 182 n. 13, 184 202 n. 21, 221 n. 1
n. 23, 184 n. 24, 185 n. 36 Āyambil Olı̄ festival, 8, 82–83, 85, 88–89,
dı̄ksā. See ordination 171–172,_183 n. 19, 202 n. 21, 203 n. 29,
˙
Dı̄vālı̄. See festivals 204 n. 35
divorce, 56, 70, 75, 113, 115, 117, 137–138, 150 Dı̄vālı̄, 8, 183 n. 20
de facto, 56, 75 Paryusan, 4, 175
˙ ˙
dress, 18–19, 110, 121, 129, 130, 144–147, 149, Nemi Vacan, 4, 174–177
160, 163–165, 177, 210 n. 37, 213 n. 64, 215 temple anniversary, 175
n. 10, 215 n. 11 fidelity/ infidelity, 16–17, 21, 58, 65–67, 71, 113,
caniyā-colı̄, 145 115, 118–119, 126–127
˙
cundadı̄/ cunarı̄, 116, 130, 135–137 Foucault, Michel, 29
(see _also veil) funerals, 18–19, 22, 25, 36, 65, 120–122, 125,
rituals of dress, 118, 121–126, 128, 138, 210 129, 181 n. 2, 186 n. 48, 208 n. 27, 209 n.
n. 39, 210 n. 40 30, 210 n. 43. See also death
sari/ sadı̄, 17–19, 81, 145–147, 149, 164, 177,
201 n._ 37, 210 n. 40, 215 n. 9, 216 n. 11, _
ghūngha t. See veil
216 n. 15, 217 n. 17 _ 125
gifting, 122,
gı̄t. See songs
embodiment 27, 29–31, 32, 79, 142–144, gods/goddesses, 37, 38, 44–45, 47, 48, 49, 50,
147–148, 150, 155, 167 53, 59–61, 65, 83, 109, 123, 130–132,
as satı̄s, 79, 100–105, 141, 153–154, 158, 135–136, 172, 183 n. 20, 187 n. 1, 189 n. 17,
163–166, 168–170 190 n. 21, 192 n. 35, 195 n. 13, 206 n. 9,
performativity, 29–31, 142–143 212 n. 56, 212 n. 60, 212 n. 63, 213 n. 69,
See also body 213 n. 71, 220 n. 1
Gold, Ann G., 67, 71–2, 87, 151, 173,
family, 15, 19–20, 24, 37, 40, 42–44, 45, 47–49, 186 n. 49, 188 n. 4, 198 n. 36, 213 n. 69,
52, 55–57, 69–70, 75, 77, 88, 98–99, 105, 221 n. 1
114, 120, 136, 189 n. 13, 194 n. 10, 196 n. groom, 4, 61–62, 67, 81, 115–117, 134, 136, 144,
24, 209 n. 31, 220 n. 47 147, 149–150, 153, 185 n. 24, 190 n. 21, 194
INDEX 247
n. 10, 194 n. 11, 197 n. 22, 209 n. 32, 216 Kālal De Satı̄, 128
n. 15. See also husband _
karma, 6, 47, 57, 65, 93, 118, 158, 162, 163, 196
“The Groom Turns from the Door- n. 17
garland”, 138–139 merit (punya), 7, 8, 27–28, 39–40,
˙
42, 45, 47, 55, 77, 92–93, 162,
Hardgrove, Anne, 25, 137, 216 n. 13 166, 172–173, 184 n. 23,
Harlan, Lindsey, 24–25, 89, 121–122, 128–129, 189 n. 13
132–133, 137, 186 n. 41, 195 n. 14, 209 n. demerit (pāp), 40
33, 211 n. 54 Jain karma theory, 27–30, 37–40, 182 n. 10,
health, 27–28, 45, 46, 81–84, 91, 93–97, 187 n. 187 n. 52, 188 n. 6
51, 187 n. 1 liberation (moksā), 4, 6, 21, 27–28, 37,
˙
henna, 18, 121–122, 125–126, 132–134, 137–138, 43, 49, 52–53, 56, 63, 111, 114, 116,
149 121, 126, 127, 130, 139–140, 156–157,
heroism, 3–4, 25–26, 128–129, 132, 173, 181 n. 3 172–173
Hindu merit transfer, 35–40, 50, 91, 187 n. 1
fasting stories (vrat kathā), 58, 60, 92 decreasing, 8, 36, 42, 47–49, 76, 93,
fasts, 36–37, 53–54, 57–58, 60, 71, 72, 87, 172–173, 218 n. 31
188 n. 4 Khartar Gacch, 6, 9, 45, 83, 182 n. 7, 189 n. 14,
renunciation, 120–121, 193 n. 5 189 n. 17, 199 n. 40
rites (samskāra), 9, 15, 184 n. 24, 208 n. 27, kuldevı̄, 109, 132, 190 n. 21. See also gods and
29 n. _29 (see also wedding) goddesses
satı̄s, 21–25, 87, 110, 120, 121, 128–129 (see _ m, 18, 121–123, 125, 132, 187 n. 1
kunku
also satı̄s; satı̄mātās) _
women, 16, 18, 20, 35, 37–38, 47, 56, 76, 87, Laidlaw, James, 40, 44, 48, 51–53, 83, 92, 143,
173, 186 n. 32 155–157, 185 n. 36, 190 n. 18, 191 n. 24, 191
worship (pūjā), 5, 8, 132, 137, 187 n. 1, 189 n. n. 31, 192
12, 206 n. 9 n. 35, 209 n. 30, 214 n. 77,
Hollywood, Amy, 29 214 n. 5
husband, 9, 11, 15–22, 27, 31, 35–38, 42, 43–49, Leslie, Julia, 16, 25, 87, 185 n. 37
56–58, 63, 66–71, 80, 83–84, 86–88, “Lift Rajul’s Veil,” 135–136
97–99, 110, 117, 120–122, 126–128, 136, love
157, 172, 175–178, 184 n. 27, 187 n. 51, 189 n. romantic, 56, 57, 58, 67, 98, 115, 117–119,
13, 191 n. 31, 196 n. 20, 198 n. 30, 199 n. 40. 127, 178
See also groom marriages/ match, 15, 61–63, 67, 99. See
also affection
ideology, 4, 6, 14–15, 26–29, 32, 165–167, 171,
173–174 magic, 35, 45–47, 61, 71, 72, 79, 172–173
renunciation (moksā mārg) as ideology, 6, amulets/ objects, 45, 46
˙
39, 52–53, 58, 74, 109–110, 112–114, substances, 46–47 (see also praksal, vaskep)
˙
118–119, 125–126, 129, 139–141, 143, 153, mahāpūjā, 42, 46, 47, 80, 191 n. 23,
156–157 200 n. 2, 203 n. 27, 204 n. 33,
pativratā as ideology, 16–18, 19, 109, 118, 204 n. 35, 205 n. 37. See also Siddhacakra
139–140, 141, 143, 153 mahāpūjā
satı̄ as ideology, 21–23, 25–26, 110 mahāsatı̄, 172, 185 n. 34, 200 n. 1. See also satı̄;
infertility, 57, 67, 69–71, 75, 94, 155. See also satı̄mātā
fertility Mahāvı̄r, 5, 36, 123–125, 158–161, 163–165, 167,
intimacy. See affection; love 182 n. 9, 183 n. 20, 189 n. 17, 206 n. 8,
209 n. 28
jewelry, 18–19, 56, 89, 121, 122, 125–126, 128, 130, Mahmood, Saba, 27, 73, 146, 147, 174
133–134, 138, 149, 177, 213 n. 64 mantra, 45–46, 49, 82, 104, 184 n. 24, 190 n.
_
bangles (glass, cūdiyā; gold, kangan), 135, 20, 190 n. 22, 203 n. 26. See also Navkār
213 n. 67 _ mantra
ivory armbands (cūdo), 18, 133, 134–135 marriage, 4, 15, 17, 19, 31–32, 38, 41, 58, 62–63,
_
rituals, pallu, 148–149 116–117, 120, 134, 141. See also agency;
248 INDEX
divorce; fidelity; marriage arrangements; Nemi/Nemināth, 110–120, 126–127, 129–130,

pleasure; wedding 132, 134–135, 138–139
and agency, 77, 97, 142, 157 Nemi Vacan. See festivals
companiate, 86, 88, 98–99, 172 nunhood, 12, 29, 75, 110, 113, 121, 128, 142–144,
fears about, 10, 56–58, 61, 65 151, 154–159, 166–170, 173, 183 n. 22, 202
happy marriages, 56, 79, 90–91, 92, 130, n. 24
148, 164, 173 nuns, 4, 5, 6, 18, 26, 28, 61, 75, 122–126, 129,
ideal marriage, 79–80, 95, 97–99, 104–105 130, 139, 141–142, 150–154, 156, 159,
pleasure of marriage, 11, 68, 92, 150, 158, 160–161, 162, 164–165, 168–170, 182 n. 7,
174–179 183 n. 14, 184 n. 23, 185 n. 34, 199 n. 40,
strictures after marriage, 144, 154–155 200 n. 43, 210 n. 37, 214 n. 5
unhappy marriages, 56, 58, 65, 68, 70, 75,
173 ordination (dı̄ksā), 4, 10, 19, 74–75, 110,
˙
marriage arrangements, 4, 9, 15, 57, 58, 65, 72, 120–121, 122–126, 127, 129–130, 139, 143,
76, 97, 146–148, 159, 160–161, 167 151, 152, 154–155, 156–157, 160–161, 165,
bad arrangements, 57, 61–62 169
engagement, 147, 151, 155, 194 n. 11
and love marriages, 15, 66 parades. See processions
marriageability, 144, 160, 163, 169 Paryusan. See festivals
˙ ˙
resistance to, 150–154, 166, 169 Pativratā, 3–4, 14–18, 87, 171
Marwaris (Mārvādı̄s), 5, 8–9, 17, 22, 25, 101, as discourse, 14–15, 19, 25–27, 36, 109–110,
122, 137, 154,_ 181 n. 4, 186 n. 46, 216 n. 9, 114, 119, 129, 166, 171, 184 n. 29, 196 n.
216 n. 13, 217 n. 18 20
Maynāsundarı̄, 11, 31, 43, 48, 79–86, 88–91, rituals marking, 24–25, 28, 56, 184 n. 27
˙
92, 93, 95–97, 99, 105, 158, 171–172, 185 personhood, 30–31, 142, 187 n. 53
n. 31, 188 n. 10, 200 n. 1, 200 n. 2, 201 n. piety, 13, 18, 19, 27, 28, 35, 39, 41, 44, 47, 49, 53,
8, 203 n. 30, 203 n. 31, 220 n. 1 61, 86, 173–174
Mayn.āsundarı̄ Sajjhāy, 13, 85–86, 90 Jain piety as effective, 51–52, 63, 84, 90, 173
Middle class identity, 5, 9–10, 20, 66, 87–88, strategic, 55–57, 62, 73–77
144, 185 n. 35, 217 n. 18 pleasure, 13, 52, 68, 91–92, 114, 126, 171,
Modesty, 10, 142, 144–148, 166. See also veil 174–179
moksa. See liberation posadh, 155, 191 n. 31, 218 n. 24
˙ ˙
moksa-mārg. See ideology praksal, 46–47, 84, 96, 191 n. 24. See also
˙ ˙
mother-in-law, 17, 57, 62, 63, 68, 71–73, 80, 85, magic substances
87, 98, 184 n. 28, 186 n. 50, 196 n. 22, 197 pratikraman. See confession
˙
n. 24, 222 n. 47 privacy, 10–11, 52, 66–69, 76–77, 145, 150, 191
Mrozik, Suzanne, 30 n. 24, 196 n. 20, 196 n. 24
processions, 10, 209 n. 32
Navkār mantra, 46, 61, 82–83, 88, 93, 94, 194 dı̄ksā, 123, 125
˙
n. 8, 200 n. 2. See also mantra royal, 123–124, 210 n. 43
Navpad Olı̄ Fast, 41, 48–49, 80, 82, 90, 91–93, satı̄, 112, 116, 122–126, 129–130
96–97,_ 103–105, 156, 188 n. 10, 198 n. 10, pūjā. See worship; Hindu worship
200 n. 2, 200 n. 3, 201 n. 7, 202 n. 20, purdah. See veil
202 n. 21, 202 n. 23. See also āyambil;
Āyambil Olı̄; fasting Rājal Bārahmāsa, 12, 117–118, 126, 208 n. 24
Navpad/Navpadjı̄,_ 86, 90, 94, 100, 101, 200 n. rajoharan, 124, 125, 165
˙
2, 203 n. 26, 204 n. 33. See also Rājı̄matı̄ Bār Māsanı̄ Sajjhāy, 127
siddhacakra Rājı̄matı̄ Sajjhāy, 115
Navpadnı̄ Sajjhāy, 85–86, 90 Rājı̄matı̄satı̄ Sajjhāy, 13
Navpad pūjā, 90–93, 96, 97, 100, 103–105, 191 Rajput, 23, 25, 87, 109, 128, 132, 136, 195 n. 13,
n. 23, 200 n. 3, 202 n. 18, 204 n. 35 205 n. 3
Navpadjı̄ Stavan, 93–94 Rājul/ Rājı̄matı̄, 12, 32, 109–121, 124, 126–132,
Nemanāthno Saloko, 14, 112, 116, 118, 127, 130, 134–140, 158, 166–170, 175, 178–179, 212
132, 175–177, 221 n. 5 n. 57, 214 n. 79, 219 n. 32, 221 n. 5
INDEX 249
Rajul’s Lament, 119 saubhāgyavatı̄, 18–19, 35, 123, 215 n. 11, 221 n. 4
Rānı̄ Satı̄, 22, 133, 137, 186 n. 46 Sāvitrı̄, 37, 43, 58, 186 n. 40
renunciation, 4, 6, 14, 26, 29, 32, 74, 109–114, selfhood, 26–31, 142, 174, 187 n. 53, 214 n. 2
117, 128–129, 140, 141–143, 151–157, sexuality, 16, 17, 27, 56, 67–69, 70, 136, 142,
164–165, 169–170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 177, 148, 150, 159–160, 177, 196 n. 20, 197 n.
193 n. 3, 211 n. 55. See also ideology; 27, 198 n. 30, 207 n. 16, 214 n. 69
ordination as expected, 67–68, 150, 160, 178
as devotion, 126–127, 139 renounced or rejected, 9, 114, 183 n. 14
rituals of, 120–126 as threat to family order, 148, 161
rationales for, 74–75, 126, 142, 199 n. 39, See also affection; love
199 n. 40 siddhacakra, 46, 79–80, 83–85, 88, 90–91,
Hindu, 120, 166, 208 n. 27, 209 n. 30 93–97, 103–104, 172, 173, 190 n. 20, 200
Reynell, Josephine, 10, 27, 28–29, 40, 41, 43, n. 2, 200 n. 3,
44, 48, 91–92, 154–155, 162, 172, 187 n. 53, 203 n. 29, 204 n. 33. See also
188 n. 9, 189 n. 13, 196 n. 17 Navpad
ritual drama and reenactments, 8, 12, 14, 32, Siddhacakra mahāpūjā, 46, 79, 80, 90,
79, 161–163, 168, 172 93–105, 200 n. 2, 203 n. 27, 204 n. 35, 205
Rohinı̄, 12, 48, 50–52 n. 37. See also mahāpūjās
˙
Rohinı̄ fast, 12, 36, 48–50, 52–54, 56–57, 90, singing, 8, 9, 26, 206 n. 9
˙
92, 103, 173, 191 n. 31, 192 n. 39, 193 n. 44. bhāvanā, 12, 112, 132, 135,
See also fasting; Rohinı̄ rātı̄jagā (rātrı̄jagran), 24–25, 132
˙
sister, 60, 72, 85, 145, 147, 151, 167, 173, 183 n.
śaktı̄, 64, 122–123, 195 n. 15 20, 196 n. 21, 199 n. 30
sat, 138–139 sister-in-law, 72, 145, 149, 175, 199 n. 36
satı̄, 3–4, 7, 18–19, 20, 24, 66, 76, 171, 172, 181 social roles. See daughter; daughter-in-law;
n. 2 groom; husband; mother-in-law; nuns;
British colonial, 21–23, 185 n. 37, 210 n. 36 sister; sister-in-law; widow; wife
as discourse, 21–26, 118–119, 121, 126, 166 Sol Satı̄no Chand 3, 181 n. 1
feminist discussions, 23–24 _
Songs, 14, 19, 176, 178, 184 n. 23, 213 n. 69,
Hindu, 21–22, 120, 125, 127, 128, 186 n. 40 219 n. 32
Jain veneration, 25–26, 110, 130–132, cundadı̄ gı̄t (veil songs), 14, 112, 130, 132,
139–141, 166 _
134–136, 138–139, 212 n. 61 220 n. 44
narratives, 11–14, 17–18, 28, 43, 55–56, 58, satı̄mātā songs, 121, 128, 132–133, 137
73, 74, 76, 141, 151, 183 n. 15 stavan, 14, 93, 119, 220 n. 44
virtue, 76–77. See also Añjanāsundarı̄; tapasya gı̄t (fasting songs), 14
Brahmı̄-Sundarı̄; Candanbālā; death; Śrı̄pāl, 79–84, 88–89, 93–98, 100–101,
ideology; Maynāsundarı̄; Rājul; Rohinı̄; 103–105, 172, 201 n. 7, 203 n. 31
˙ ˙
Subhadrā; Sulasā; satı̄mātās Śrı̄pāl Rājāno Rās, 84, 85, 92
satı̄mātās, 5, 22, 109, 112, 119, 126, 130–132, _
śrngār. See dress; henna; jewelry; kunku_ m
138, 164, 194 n. 7, 206 n. 5 _
Sthānakavāsı̄, 6, 62, 154, 182 n. 7, _
living satı̄mātās, 129, 186 n. 42, 209 n. 35 185 n. 34, 194 n. 12, 199 n. 40,
rites of death and funeral, 22–23, 25, 203 n. 26, 211 n. 45
109–110, 120–124, 126–127, 153, 186 n. Subhadrā, 12, 31, 43, 55, 57–63, 71, 73, 74, 76,
38, 186 n. 41, 205 n. 3, 208 n. 23 86
songs, 132–134, 137 Sulasā, 36–37, 53
symbols, 123, 128, 209 n. 34 Śvetāmbar, 5–6, 7, 8, 66, 79, 85, 112,
veneration, 9, 24–25, 136–137, 185 n. 35, 185 120–123, 154, 182 n. 6, 182 n. 7, 182 n. 9
n. 36 (see also Bālāsatı̄mātā; Kālal De Satı̄;
Rānı̄ Satı̄; satı̄) _ tap. See fasting
satı̄vratā, 126, 153, 211 n. 54 technologies, new, 12, 79, 83
saubhāgya, 4, 14, 18–20, 35–38, 41, 44, 47–50, Terāpanthı̄, 6, 61, 122, 182 n. 7, 182 n. 8, 189 n.
52–54, 56, 90, 103, 171, 187 n. 1, 188 n. 4 14, 190 n. 18, 194 n. 12, 199 n. 40, 200 n.
Saubhāgya Pañcamı̄ fast, 8, 132, 175, 212 n. 59. 43, 210 n. 38, 210 n. 39, 210 n. 40, 210 n.
See also fasting 41, 217 n. 20
250 INDEX
threshold, 112, 116–117, 121–122, 128–129, 135, rites, haldı̄/ pı̄thı̄ cola, 117–118
139, 144, 158–159, 161, 166–170, 176 rites, kanya dān,_ 19
rituals of, 121, 123, 125 rites, pallu, 148–150, 216 n. 15
rites, ponkhanā, 117
˙
Updhān fast, 44, 155–158, 218 n. 25. See also rites, sindūr dān, 149, 217 n. 16
fasting rites, svayamvara, 66, 116
Uttarādhyayana Sūtra, 13, 112–115, 118, 130 See also marriage
Weinberger-Thomas, Catherine, 119,
Vallely, Anne, 61, 120, 122, 143, 153–154, 121, 122, 125, 128–129, 153, 186 n. 41, 194
160–161, 182 n. 8, 185 n. 36, 189 n. 14, 190 n. 7, 198 n. 31, 209 n. 34,
n. 18, 200 n. 43, 209 n. 31, 210 n. 38, 210 n. 211 n. 49
39, 214 n. 4, 217 n. 20 widowhood, 16, 18–20, 23, 25, 36, 52–54, 58,
vāskep, 46. See also magic substances 70, 85, 105, 120–121, 128, 129, 137, 140,
veil, 67, 115, 133–136, 145, 176, 177, 214 n. 69, 150, 157, 160, 163, 174, 181 n. 2, 185 n. 30,
215 n. 11 185 n. 31, 185 n. 32, 185 n. 33, 197 n. 26,
cunarı̄, 45, 131, 133, 135, 137 198 n. 31, 199 n. 40, 205 n. 38,
cunari rituals, 45, 136–137 213 n. 67
_ t, 17
ghūnga wifehood, 4, 8, 11–15, 18–19, 27–31, 35, 37–38,
purdah,_ 136 83, 95–97, 103, 109–110, 113, 120, 128,
songs, 14, 112, 130, 132–134, 138–139 133–135, 137, 142–144, 147, 150, 153–155,
veiling, 124, 146–147 158, 160–161, 165–167, 171–179
vrat, Hindu. See fasting studies of, 27, 74–75, 98–99
and selfhood, 142
Walsh, Judith, 87–88, 98–99 See also wives
wedding 4, 18–19, 57, 66, 95, 112–113, 116–117, wives, 20, 36, 41–42, 50–52, 55, 63, 66–69, 72,
121, 123–124, 134–137, 168, 175, 184 n. 24, 74, 98, 116, 121, 134, 148, 161, 172, 177
191 n. 21, 194 n. 10, 196 n. 22, 199 n. 37, gharlaksmı̄, 172
˙
205 n. 38, 206 n. 9 ideal wives, 79–80, 84–94 (see also
wedding ceremony, 15, 19, 95, 112, 116–117, dharmapatnı̄)
122–124, 134–138, 148, 150, 175, 178, 184 as role models, 42–44
n. 24, 185 n. 30, 190 n. 21, 196 n. 22, 206 as teachers, 43
n. 9, 207 n. 11, 208 n. 22, 209 n. 32, 210 as virtuous, 16–18, 26, 61
n. 39, 213 n. 71, 216 n. 11, 217 n. 16, 217 n. See also wifehood
17 worship, Jain (pūjā), 6, 7–8, 19, 32, 41–47, 49,
fairs, 148, 215 n. 11, 217 n. 13 56–57, 62–63, 80, 84, 92, 95–97, 103, 124,
Hindu rites, 15 130, 172, 190 n. 18, 194 n. 12, 211 n. 44

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Copyright # 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States of America

I dedicate this book to three people:

Note on Translation and Transliteration, xiii

1. Thinking about Wifehood, 3

Part I. Making Ideal Marriages

2. Fasting, Saubhāgya, and Jain Satı̄ Narratives, 35

3. Jain Satı̄s, Women’s Agency, and Bad Marriages, 55

4. The Perfect Marriage, 79

Part II. Negotiating Discourses

5. Jains and Satı̄mātā Discourse, 109

6. Embodying Wifehood, 141

Conclusion: The Pleasures of Jain Wifehood, 171

Works Cited, 233

My research was conducted in a mixture of Gujarati and Hindi

Praises to Ādināth, the ﬁrst Jina, make our prayers fruitful.

A quick introduction to Jainism will set my discussion in its context. My

guru veneration, annual and monthly festivals linked to a lunar calendar,

Siting the Study

authoritative, though some lay Jains in the community aligned themselves

Research on Wifehood and Privacy

Jain Satı̄ Narratives

as in the story of Candanbālā, as a required part of a fast-breaking ritual.

Satı̄, Suttee, and the Discourse of Virtue

beyond ofﬁcial British government documents to include representations

understanding the profound attachment to satı̄mātās and satı̄ discourse felt

Agency, Selfhood, and the Jain Body

and acting when women make conventional choices, as they do in a Jain

importance of moksa-mārg ideology provide a locus for Jain selfhood. When a

performances themselves, and shape my thinking about performance, body,

Overview of the Book

Part I: “Making Ideal Marriages,” including chapters 2, 3 and 4, focuses on

Making Ideal Marriages

Jains, like Hindus, participate in the discourse of good wives as

saubhāgya that Jain laywomen understand to be Jain rituals.1 In each of these

Karma Theory and Jain Merit Transfer

To understand how Jains creatively accommodate saubhāgya practices, they

For Jains, however, merit transfer is more problematic. Jain scholar-monks

Strategies for Maintaining One’s Saubhāgya

Direct Participation by the Husband

often performed some smaller austerity alongside. This kind of solidarity is a

Fasting for Saubhāgya

social context in which women’s authority is accepted and interests honored.27

saubhāgya through the protection of a woman’s equanimity and the prevention

ROHI NI¯ ’S STORY

Jain community between the liberation ideology, which promotes becoming a

Jain satı̄ narratives provide a corpus of directives for maintaining

Satı̄ Narratives and Strategies for Creating Marital Happiness

The primary concern in Hindu saubhāgya fasting narratives is likewise to

Bad Marriage Arrangements

duces a number of additional marital problems that will be discussed in turn:

Añjanā was married to Pavanañjay, but before the marriage was

Intimacy and Rejection

time.23 The negotiation of expectations between the “traditional” ideology of

The Perils of In/Fertility

2.4.13.15–32). The theme of the virtuous woman wrongly accused of adultery by

The Accusing Mother-in-Law

Strategic Piety in Jainism

to keep her husband from prohibiting her participation in the women’s