Abstract

The ceremony of īryāpathikīpratikramaṇa in which a renunciant or lay person repents for any violence inflicted on living creatures during motion is one of the central rituals of Jain disciplinary observance. The correct procedure for this ritual and its connection to sāmāyika, temporary contemplative withdrawal, were discussed during the first millennium CE in the Śvetāmbara Āvaśyaka literature. The Āvaśyaka Cūrṇi and the Mahāniśītha Sūtra offer two alternative orderings, with the former text prescribing that īryāpathikīpratikramaṇa be carried out after sāmāyika and the latter text recommending that no religious activity should be engaged in without being preceded by īryāpathikīpratikramaṇa. The validity of these apparently contradictory ritual structures was debated by Dharmasāgara of the Tapā Gaccha and Jayasoma of the Kharatara Gaccha in the context of intra-Śvetāmbara controversy over scriptural hermeneutics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries