ABSTRACT
It was the monks of the M¨la San≥gha who exerted the dominant and most longstanding influence in the Digambara ascetic community. Digambara tradition views the M¨la San≥gha as in some way replacing the Nirgrantha Sampradåya, the ‘Bondless Lineage’, a supposedly pristine line of undifferentiated descent from Mahåv⁄ra. The first allusions to this signal an awareness of the growing separation of naked and white-robed monks and can most likely be dated to about the end of the fourth century. flvetåmbara references to the appearance of a ‘Forest-dwelling Lineage’ under the head of the teacher Samantabhadra confirm the existence of a particularly austere ascetic community which was eventually to be known as Digambara. The M¨la San≥gha and its senior monks are referred to repeatedly in inscriptions from about the fifth or sixth century and the name occurs at flravan˝a Bel¸gol¸a as late as the nineteenth century, although an affirmation of affiliation to it by that late date must have been a hollow one.26 For flrutasågara, writing in the sixteenth century, the M¨la San≥gha was so called because it was the basis (m¨la) of the path to deliverance and those who did not belong to it were verse 11).
