ånj⁄

That this was indeed an ill omen was to be borne out in the course of Kånj⁄’s monastic career. Despite the fact that he quickly became a learned and famous monk, whose nickname among the Sthånakvås⁄ community was the ‘Koh-i-noor of Kathiåwår’, he was never able to engage fully with the flvetåmbara scriptures which he was to claim lacked a sense of soul. By his own account, the event which changed the course of K Svåm⁄’s life was his discovery around 1921 of Kundakunda’s ‘Essence of the Doctrine’.64 After studying this text in seclusion, he went on to read the writings of other Digambaras such as ˝o∂armal and flr⁄mad Råjacandra, as a result of which he became convinced that Digambara Jainism was the true path.