Guardians of the transcendent

Vallely, Anne . Guardians of the transcendent: an ethnography of a Jain ascetic community . 296 pp., plates, fig., bibliogr . London, Toronto : Univ. Toronto Press , 2002 . £ 45.00 (cloth), £18.00 (paper) To what degree do the roles of worldly social life carry over into the monastic world? And, more specifically, to what extent and in what ways do worldly gender roles project into world-renouncers’ lives? Anne Vallely addresses these questions in a study of nuns belonging to the non-image-worshipping Terapanthi sect of the Shvetambar Jains. Her research was conducted over a period of slightly more than one year at Ladnun, a Rajasthani town that serves as a sectarian epicentre for the Terapanthis. During this year she was in intimate and prolonged contact with nuns and girls preparing to be nuns, and the resulting book provides an empirically rich and analytically innovative window into a lifeway of extraordinary restriction and discipline. Jain ethics and cosmology set Vallely's stage. In the foreground are non-violence and asceticism, which together underlie a distinction at the heart of Vallely's materials and analysis: the contrast between the worldly (laukik) and the transcendental (lokottar). She shows how this distinction is idealized in the opposed images of generous householder and restrained ascetic, images that are ritually enacted in almsgiving, a core transaction in the religious life of Jain communities. In almsgiving, giver and recipient interact as stereotyped ‘personages’ rather than as individuals, and the symbolism denies that ‘exchange’ has taken place, with the result that the ascetic recipient remains free of social ties to the giver. Another key Jain ritual, one in which much of the symbolism of mendicant-lay relationships is compressed into a single package, is the rite of initiation of monks and nuns. Especially striking is the symbolic juxtaposition of wealth and possessionlessness in this ritual. As Vallely shows, the jewellery and luxurious dress of the young women candidates for nunhood make the all-important point that world renunciation is meaningless if it is a virtue made of necessity. Beliefs about demonic possession bring gender differences among Jain mendicants into sharp focus. Vallely's materials show that possession absolves the possessed individual of inappropriate feelings by projecting them onto another entity, and that sexual longings figure prominently among these feelings in the case of Jain nuns. Because of their allegedly ‘more emotional’ nature, nuns are seen as more vulnerable to possession than monks. On the other hand (and in apparent contradiction), nuns are seen as sexually desireless, unlike monks, who by contrast acknowledge and even celebrate the difficulty of conquering their sexual desires. This means that nuns have no recourse but to sublimate such desires radically into fantasies about ghosts and demons. The Terapanthi monastic community is rigidly hierarchical and centrally controlled. As Vallely shows, hierarchical values lend themselves well to an intense devotionalism focused on veneration of one's spiritual superiors, and although devotionalism is devalued by Jainism's public face, with its stress on ascetic values alone, devotion often strongly motivates people to adopt the ascetic path and undertake ascetic practices. This brings us back to gender, because nuns tend to be seen (and to see themselves) as more inclined to devotionalism than the monks, which in turn connects to stereotypes of women's emotional and nurturing proclivities. From the standpoint of the tradition's public values, this places nuns in a subordinate and liminal position, never completely disentangled from the worldly realm. Even their ascetic practice is regarded as not fundamentally different from the practices of religiously serious laywomen. For the monks, by contrast, the rupture is seen as much greater, because laymen express piety largely by means of generous giving, not ascetic denial. Because of this, male renunciation is thus more highly valued than that of nuns. Still, from the standpoint of the tradition's highest values, renunciation is about release of the soul from worldly bondage, and this is as true of women as it is of men. These arguments are illustrated and supported by excellent ethnography that resonates with the spirit of friendship that Vallely clearly developed with many of her informants. She is particularly adroit at making use of ethnographic vignettes as points of departure into important issues. One of many examples is her description of the nuns’ preparation for a leading monk's birthday celebration that she then uses as an opening for a crucial discussion of Jain devotionalism. I commend the book to students of South Asian religions, whether or not their special interest is Jainism, and to anyone interested in the role of women in ascetic traditions

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