ABSTRACT
The catalyst for the final hardening of boundaries between the flvetåmbaras and the Digambaras was most likely the Council of Valabh⁄ which took place in western India in either 453 or 466 CE, depending on the reckoning. This was not a council in the Christian sense in which matters of doctrine were debated, but rather an attempt to codify a scriptural tradition which Jainism had always seen as imperilled since Mahåv⁄ra’s day. The important point about this event is that it was exclusively flvetåmbara, with no naked monks in attendance and indeed no record of it in any Digambara source. The Council of Valabh⁄ bears witness to what had become a broad geographical distribution in the Jain community, with naked ascetics predominating in the south and the main sphere of influence of the white-robed flvetåmbaras being in the west. As Jainism moved out of its original heartland in the east and spread throughout India, lines of communication between groups of ascetics could only have been stretched enormously, with a concomitant lack of any central authority about matters of monastic practice which in certain respects, such as the question of dress, must have originally been comparatively flexible. It was the stabilisation of an old scriptural tradition by one section of the community which finally confirmed the existence of fully self-conscious flvetåmbara and Digambara sects, the latter rejecting the authority of the editorial process which had given rise to a flvetåmbara scriptural canon (see Chapter 3).
