"Like a city ablaze": The third sex and the creation of sexuality in jain religious literature

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 359-384

  Zwilling, Leonard ^a   Sweet, Michael J ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BISEXUALITY; HISTORY; HUMAN; INDIA; RELIGION; SEX; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR;

BISEXUALITY; HISTORY, ANCIENT; HISTORY, EARLY MODERN 1451-1600; HISTORY, MEDIEVAL; HISTORY, MODERN 1601-; HUMANS; INDIA; RELIGION AND SEX; SEX; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR;

EID: 0029682930     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (147)

1. See representative statements of this position in David F. Greenberg, The Social Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago, 1988), pp. 397-488;
2. David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York, 1990), pp. 15-40;
3. and John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire (New York, 1990), pp. 3-4.
4. The locus classicus for this view is found in Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, 1978), pp. 42-43.
5. David M. Halperin, "Is There a History of Sexuality?" in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Harry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (New York, 1993), p. 417.
6. Halperin, One Hundred Years, p. 16.
7. On the cinaedus (kinaidos in Greek) see Amy Rkhlin, "Not before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1993): 523-73,
8. as well as her Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Ancient Rome, rev. ed. (New York, 1992).
9. Essentialist views on male receptive sexuality were expressed by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics 1150.12-16,
10. and in a much later work ascribed to him, the Problemata Physica 897b1-14, 28, 880a5.
11. On the psychopathology of the anal-receptive, cross-dressing mollis (equivalent to the cinaedus) see Caelius Aurelianus, On Acute Diseases and on Chronic Diseases, trans. I. E. Drabkin (Chicago, 1950), pp. 901-5.
12. This is in fact the argument made by Halperin, One Hundred Years, pp. 21-24, in his analysis of Caelius Aurelianus.
13. Eugene Rice, "Ancient Origins of Modern Homophobia" (lecture delivered at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, March 23, 1995).
14. On this subject see John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1981), p. 52, n. 28;
15. Giuseppe Bezza, Commento al Primo Libro della Tetrabiblos di Claudio Tolemeo (Milan, 1990), p. 92;
16. Julius Firmicus Maternus, Ancient Astrology: Theory and Practice, trans. Jean Rhys Bram (Park Ridge, IL, 1975), pp. 207-8, 210, 214, 218, 248-49.
17. See the argument concerning the appeals to a hermaphrodite's nature, in the sense of attraction to one sex or the other, in deciding his/her "true" sex, in Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, "The Hermaphrodite and the Orders of Nature: Sexual Ambiguity in Early Modern France," GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 1 (1995): 519-38.
18. On the Indian medical literature see Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling, "The First Medicalization: The Taxonomy and Etiology of Queerness in Classical Indian Medicine," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1993): 590-607. On the criteria for membership in the third-sex categories see pp. 592-94.
19. See Ihara Saikaku, The Great Mirror of Male Love, trans. Paul G. Schalow (Stanford, CA, 1990), p. 4.
20. Sweet and Zwilling, p. 591, n. 4.
21. The best general introduction to the Jain religion, in its historical and social as well as doctrinal aspects, is Paul Dundas, The Jains (London, 1992);
22. Padmanabh S. Jaini's landmark The Jaina Path of Purification (Delhi, 1979) gives a more detailed account of Jain writings and doctrines. We here use the contemporary form "Jain" rather than the Sanskrit "Jaina" found in many Indological writings. There are somewhat over three million Jains in India today, mainly concentrated in Western India, in the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Karnataka (Dundas, p. 3).
23. Jainism has survived uninterruptedly in India since the fifth century B.C.E., unlike Buddhism, its contemporary or slightly younger cognate mendicant (śramana) movement; for speculations on the reasons for this, see Padmanabh S. Jaini, "The Disappearance of Buddhism and the Survival of Jainism," in Studies in the History of Buddhism, ed. A. K. Narain (Delhi, 1980).
24. For a review of cross-dressing and transsexualism in epic and religious literature interpreted from a psychoanalytic perspective, see Robert P. Goldman, "Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional India," Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1993): 374-401.
25. See also Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago, 1980), pp. 297-334.
26. Sátapatha Brāhmana (ŚB) 10.5.1.2-3.
27. These are some of the conclusions reached in our paper on the early formation of the third-sex concept, currently being prepared for publication.
28. Sex is held to be determined at the time of conception, dependent on the predominance of either the father's seed or the mother's blood, in which case the child will be either male or female, respectively. When blood and seed are in equilibrium there will be birth as a napuṁsaka. The notion of the third sex as an equilibrium is expressed in the belief that the third-sex fetus develops in the center of the womb, rather than on the right or left sides as with males or females. For a summary of the Jain sources that treat conception and embryology see Walther Schubring, The Doctrine of the Jainas Described after the Oldest Sources (New Delhi, 1962), pp. 141-42,
29. as well as the same author's Tandulaveyāliya: Ein Painnaya des Jaina-Siddhānta: Textausgabe, Analyse und Erklärung (Mainz, 1965).
30. The Jain view is essentially identical to that of the traditional Indian medical system (āyurveda) and was very likely a part of the common body of third-sex lore; see Sweet and Zwilling, pp. 594-97. Third-sex persons are held to be anatomically different from both men and women in certain minor ways, though they are closer to the latter, in harmony with the general view of the third sex as a feminized, unmanly male; e.g., men have 700 veins and 500 muscles; women, 670 veins and 470 muscles; napuṁsakas (here called pandaga), 680 veins and 480 muscles; see Schubring, Doctrine, p. 143. An association of the right side with a male child, and the left with a female was also made by the Greeks and the Chinese; see Hanns Oertel, "Contributions from the Jāiminīya Brāhmana to the History of the Brāhmana Literature," Journal of the American Oriental Society 26 (1905): 190.
31. Caraka 4.2.25b. It should also be noted that prakrti can often be translated as "nature," as in the case of its derivative prākrta for "natural language" in contrast to samskrta, artificial or literary language. This suggests that the third sex, along with the other two sexes, was regarded as a natural category in India.
32. Amarakośa 2.6.39. On the date of this work, see A. A. Ramanathan, ed., Amarakośa (Madras, 1971), p. xxi.
33. For trairāśika (Prakrit terāsi) see, e.g., the list of forty unfit donors at Pinda 572-77;
34. Nisī Bhā 5217;
35. Brh Bhā 2572, 2575;
36. for trtīya (Prakrit tatia) see Nisī Cū 3564;
37. Brh Bhā 5170.
38. The most complete study of the hijras to date is Serena Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont, CA, 1990).
39. See also ethnographic accounts in G. Morris Carstairs, The Twice Born: A Study of a Community of High Caste Hindus (Bloomington, IN, 1967), pp. 59-61;
40. and James Freeman, Untouchable: An Indian Life History (Stanford, CA, 1979), pp. 294-315.
41. The nature of the klība's defect is suggested by the later Brhadāranyaka Upanisad 6.1.12; "klības not procreating with semen" (klībā aprajāyamanā retasā). The sexual nature of the klība's defect is accepted by all the developed Indian traditions. Klība-hood may be an acquired condition as, e.g., when the penis is destroyed by fire, as in ŚB 1.4.3.19.
42. Atharva Veda (AV) 8.6.7, 11.16. The etymology of pandaka is unknown, but cf. banda at AV 7.65.3 glossed by the commentator as nirvīryn ("impotent").
43. The only previous study of gender in Jain texts is Padmanabh S. Jaini's valuable and detailed Gender and Salvation (Berkeley, 1991), which focuses on the intra-Jain controversy over the spiritual liberation (moksa) of women. Paul Dundas (letter to Leonard Zwilling and Michael J. Sweet, July 17, 1995) is of the opinion that this controversy was a "spinoff from the more central question of ascetic nudity" and did not become important until the medieval period, beginning around the sixth or seventh century C.E.
44. The Śvetāmbaras, or White-Clad, are so called because of the white robes worn by their mendicants; the Digambara, or Sky-Clad, hold that nudity is the rule for those males who seek final enlightenment, and that women are debarred from the highest spiritual accomplishments. See Dundas (n. 12 above), pp. 40-52, for the history and delineation of sectarian differences.
45. Technically, in this early discussion, the third sex is distinguished as "neither female nor male," and so the unmale was seen as not male because of his long hair, but also not female because of his maleness in other respects. Similarly, his impotence was the mark of his nonmaleness, but, like the long-haired man, he still was not a female, on account of his other masculine characteristics.
46. The original sense of liṅga is "characteristic mark or sign" (Nirukta 1.17); later on it comes to mean "sexual characteristic" in general, and "penis" in particular.
47. This position is presented straightforwardly in the third-century B.C.E. linguistic classic, Mahābhāya (The Great Commentary) 4.1.3: "[Q:] What is it that people see when they decide, this is a woman, this is a man, this is neither a woman nor a man? [A:] That person who has breasts and long hair is a woman; that person who is hairy all over is a man; that person who is different from either when those characteristics are absent, is neither woman nor man [napuṁsata]."
48. Abhidharma Kośa IV.14 c. Here the author glosses liṅga by its synonym vyan̄jana. Vyan̄jana, sexual characteristic or sex organ, it is worthwhile pointing out, is cognate with vyakti, which, like liṅga, is employed in the grammatical literature in the sense of grammatical gender, again pointing to a basic belief in a connection between natural sex and grammatical gender.
49. See Leonard Zwilling, "Homosexuality as Seen in Indian Buddhist Texts," in Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender, ed. José Cabezón (Albany, NY, 1992), pp. 204-6.
50. See Dundas, pp. 40-44.
51. In the discussion of language, including grammatical gender, see Panna 832-57 in Prajn̄āpanāsūtram (Bombay, 1969-71);
52. similarly in Thā 113, in Sthānāṅgasūtram and Samavāyāṅgasūtram (Delhi, 1985);
53. and Ācā in Ācārāṅgasūtra and Sūtrakrtāṅgasūtra (Delhi, 1985).
54. The Ācā[raṅgasūtra] is available in the translation by Hermann Jacobi in Jaina Sutras, vol. 22 of The Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1882; reprint, New Delhi, 1964).
55. Compare Utturā 20.43, 23.32, 29.42, in Daśaraikālika Sūtra, Uttarādbyāyana Sūtra, Āvaśyaka Sūtra (Bombay, 1977);
56. also Panna 1.16 where the emblems of the Jain mendicant, non-Jain mendicant, and householder are called svaliṅga, an̄ya-, and grhi-. For the Śvetāmbaras, liṅga, as we have already seen above, is used to refer to the characteristic marks of religious practitioners or laymen, where, e.g., the dravyaliṅga, or material sign of a Jain ascetic will be his whisk broom, mouth cover, etc., and the bhāvaliṅga or psychological sign, his religious vows; see Nathmal Tatia, Aspects of Jaina Monasticism (Ladnus, 1981), p. 67.
57. For more on the dravyaliṅga and bhāvaliṅga see n. 59 below. A still useful, and readily available, translation of the Uttarā[dhyāyana Sūtra] is that by Hermann Jacobi in Jaina Sutras, vol. 45 of The Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1900; reprint, New Delhi, 1964).
58. The adoption of veda as a technical term for sexuality could be construed as a stunning insult to the Brahmins, for whom it meant sacred knowledge and scripture. This is in keeping with the Jain revalorization of other Brahmanical terms, such as pudgala to mean "matter" rather than "person," or dharma to mean "motion" rather than "religious duty." Such revalorization can be seen as being of a piece with the Jains' satirical revisions and reworkings of the Hindu epics and sacred histories (purānas); see Dundas, pp. 201-6.
59. On veda as feeling see Śīlāṅkācārya on Sūya 1.2.1. For veda in the sense of biological sex, cf., e.g., Sama 156. Here the distribution of the three sexes as found among the various orders of living things is presented; e.g., hell dwellers are napuṁsaka, i.e., sexless, only; demigods (asura) are male and female only; humans and other five-sensed, womb-born animals, are of three sexes, etc. However, it should be noted that in other places where the distribution of the sexes is treated they are referred to simply as male (purusa), female (strī), or neither (napuṁsaka), as in the second chapter of the Jivā in Uvaṅgasuttāni (Ladnun, 1987). A translation of Sūya, i.e., Sūtrakrtāṅga, is available in vol. 45 of The Sacred Books of the East.
60. Strictly speaking, in the Jain system veda is a type of karma, i.e., a form of subtle matter (for non-Jains the basic meaning of karma is "action"). This matter, through the performance of certain actions, comes to adhere to the soul. When this karma is activated, it manifests in the form of sexual desire. As a type of karma see Uttarā 29.7 where the three vedas are explicitly recognized as such when added to the list of nokasāyas. At Panna 1691 and Thā 9.3.700 the list of nokasāyas begins with the three vedas, at Uttarā 32.102. They appear at the end of the list, their usual placement. Panna 1699 gives the maximum and minimum durations of the three nokasāyavedakarmas with the male veda being the shortest, and napuṁsakaveda the longest. Since the duration of the karmas depends on its strength, and the longer the duration the more deleterious it is, the napuṁsakaveda is the worst, and purusaveda the best; see Helmuth von Glasenapp, The Doctrine of Karman in Jain Philosophy (Bombay, 1942), p. 23. Those possessing purusaveda are smallest in number, those who are napuṁsakaveda the most numerous;
61. Viyāha 6.3.29 in Vyākhyāprajn̄āpti Sūtra (Bombay, 1974-82).
62. Compare also Panna 253. Of the three vedas, only the male is considered auspicious; cf. Tattvārthasūtra (TS) 8.26. An especially useful translation of the Tattvārthasūtra, which is the principal work of Jain dogmatics and one of the few treatises accepted by both Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras, is that by Nathmal Tatia, That Which Is (San Francisco, 1994).
63. The Viyāha or Vyākhyāprajn̄āpti Sūtra (also known as the Bhagavatī), a vast work of an encyclopedic character, is available in a partial translation by K. C. Lalwani, The Bhagavatī Sūtra, 4 vols. (Calcutta, 1973-85).
64. See Viyāha 2.5.1. The question under discussion is whether monks who die and become gods enjoy heavenly consorts or create them out of themselves, and thus experience two sexualities (veda), female and male, at one and the same time. The correct view presented is that it is not the case that they experience two sexualities, for a soul experiences only one sexuality at any one time, either female or male. When the female sexuality has arisen he does not experience male sexuality and vice versa ("itthiveyassa udaenaṁ no purisavedaṁ veei"). When the female sexuality is aroused a woman desires a male ("itthī itthiveenaṁ udinnenaṁ purisaṁ patthei") and when the male sexuality is aroused a man desires a woman. It is a dogma of the Jains that there are no gods who belong to the third sex.
65. For example, mendicants are warned that one of the dangers of drunkenness is seduction by a woman or a klība, see Ācā, p. 220. Places for sleep or rest frequented by women and pandakas are to be avoided; see Ācā, p. 285: "no niggaṁthe itthīpasupaṁdagasaṁsattāiṁ sayanāsanāṁ sevittae siyā"; also Thā 663; Sama 9 (see n. 9); Uttarā 512. Moreover, monks were even warned of the possibility of rape by napuṁsakas; see Ogha 217-24; also Shantaram Bhalchandra Deo, Jaina Monastic Jurisprudence (Poona, 1960), p. 13.
66. On the similes: for the Svetāmbaras, Jivā 2.74 has a cooking fire (phuṁphuaggi) for the female libido (however, the commentator Malayagiri points out that phuṁphua is a regional term for kārīsa, or dung), at 2.98 a forest fire (davaggi) for the male, and at 2.140 the conflagration of a great city (mahānagaradāha) for the napuṁsaka; in the autocommentary to TS 8.10, Umāsvāti has straw, wood, and dung fires (trnakāsthakarīsāgni) for the male, female, and napuṁsaka libidos, respectively (note the unusual order of the sexes against the customary female, male, napuṁsaka); for the Digambaras, Akalaṅka, in his commentary to TS 2.52 has a wood fire (dāruvahni), straw fire (trnāgni), and a heated brick or brick kiln (istakāgni); Vīrasena in his commentary on Satkh 1.1.101 quotes a verse giving the similes as a dung fire, a straw fire, and a heated brick or brick kiln (kārisatanittavāgaggi).
67. Ogha 241-44, in Shantaram Bhalchandra Deo, History of Jaina Monachism (Poona, 1956), p. 303; also Pinda 585.
68. This possibility was recognized in Ācā, p. 22, when a monk is warned against drunkenness because he may lust after a woman or a klība.
69. That this distinction was possible is indicated at Ācā, p. 257, which declares that things are to be called according to what they are, as when a monk sees persons he knows that "this is a woman, this is a man, this is a klība."
70. Brh Sū 4.1-2; Thā 202.
71. Like most Jain scriptures the Viyāha is a mosaic of parts belonging to different periods. It is likely that on logical grounds the sections that we refer to here are among the more recent, perhaps dating from the second to the fourth centuries C.E.
72. Viyāha. 25.6.11-12. Of the five kinds of monks, the pulāya (husk) may be purisaveyaya (having male sexual feelings) or purisanapuṁsagaveyaya (having male napuṁsaka feelings); the bausa (spotted) and kūsīla (bad) may have the sexual feelings of any of the three sexes, the last being purisanapuṁsagaveyaya, one having the sexual feelings of a male-napuṁsaka. In his rendering of the passage in question, Deleu ignores the problem posed by the male-napuṁsaka: "P[ulāga] belong to the male or neuter sex, whereas B[ausa] and K[usīla] belong to each of the three sexes," in Jozef Deleu, Viyāhapannatti (Bhagavaī) (Brugge, 1970), p. 282.
73. Nisī Bhā 4745; cf. also Brh Tī 887-88. The same distinction is found at Kāmasūtra 2.9.1-6.
74. As an interesting parallel see the description of quite masculine sodomites as partakers in "hermaphroditic" sins in Dante, Purgatorio, canto 26, cited in Daston and Park (n. 8 above), p. 424.
75. Viyāha 9.31.23 (2): a person who has attained extrasensory knowledge (avadhi) may be of female veda, male veda, or purisanapuṁsagaveda (but not napuṁsagaveda).
76. Panna 1.16; the same at Jīvā 8. This appears to be the only passage in the canonical literature in which liṅga, can be construed in the sense of sex; in this stereotyped list of fifteen types of persons who attain spiritual emancipation we find strīliṅga, purusa- napuṁsaka- sva-anya-grha-; the last three referring to those who bear the insignia of Jain mendicants, etc., which suggests that liṅga with the terms for the three sexes are to be understood as "bearing the external marks of a woman, etc.," external mark or sign being the original sense of liṅga; see Kshitish Chandra Chatterji, Technical Terms and Technique of Sanskrit Grammar (Calcutta, 1964), p. 139. In what is perhaps an earlier statement of the same view at Uttarā 1501, the words for the three sexes appear without qualification. At Uttarā 1503, 108 men, twenty women, and ten napuṁsakas are said to achieve emancipation at the same time; see Chatterji, p. 302.
77. Abhidhānarājendra, s.v. veda.
78. For the Śvetāmbaras see, e.g., Abhayadeva on Sama 156; and for the Digambaras see Vīrasena on Satkh 1.1.101.
79. See, e.g., Devendrasūri, Catvārah Karmagranthāh (Pindvādā, 1975) p. 44:
80. "Just as a blazing city burns for a great period of time and spreads to a great degree, in the same way, when the third-sex sexuality [napuṁsakaveda] comes to fruition there is an intense desire to have sex with women and men which does not disappear for a great period of time, nor is there satiation in sexual relations." It should be noted that this belief in the intense heat of the third sex's sexuality was by no means a complimentary one, from the Jain point of view, since they regarded all heat other than that produced by religious austerities (tapas) as a defiling factor impeding spiritual growth; see Jaini, Jaina Path (n. 12 above), p. 105.
81. The earliest appearance of these similes known to us is in Siddhasena's commentary on TS 8.10 (2.142) where they are presented in a somewhat unintelligible form. See Devendrasūri, p. 44. On the humors of Indian medicine and food tastes see A. K. Ramanujan, "Food for Thought: Toward an Anthology of Hindu Food-Images," in The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists, ed. R. S. Khare (Albany, NY, 1992), esp. p. 229.
82. Annamannaṁ Karemāne. This is the traditional interpretation of Brh Sū 4.2, although a sexual infraction may not have been originally meant; see Walther Schubring, Das Kalpa-Sūtra (Leipzig, 1905), p. 43.
83. Abhayadeva on Thā 201.
84. See Brh Bhā 5026: "āsaga-posagasevī, keī purisā duveyagā hoṁti."
85. In his commentary on TS 8.10 Siddhasena remarks that the napuṁsakaveda takes many forms; "for one person, there is the desire which has both men and women for its object . . . while for another there is the desire for men only (purusesvevābhilāsah)."
86. Nisī Cū 3507. Padisevāveti; i.e., he causes someone else to commit an offense upon him; cf. the Buddhist Mahāvagga 1.59.15-17 (Nava Nalanda edition) where a hermaphrodite is denied ordination because "he commits [karoti] and causes [others] to commit [kārāpeti]." As explained by Buddhaghosa in Samanta 3.1078 (Nava Nalanda edition), "'Commits': With the male sexual organ he commits a sexual transgression with women; 'Causes to commit': Having incited another, he causes [another] to commit [a sexual transgression] in his own female sexual organ."
87. ThC only reference to bisexuality that we have encountered is at Nisī Bhā 3604 (= Brh Bhā 5171) where the unmale's bisexuality is an argument against ordination since it makes it impossible for him to dwell as a monk among men, or a nun among women.
88. See Jaini, Gender (n. 23 above), pp. 11 ff.
89. On the terms dravya and bhāva as analytical categories referring to the material and the mental aspects of what is being analyzed, see Ludwig Alsdorf, "Niksepa - a Jaina Contribution to Scholastic Methodology," in his Kleine Schriften, ed. Albrecht Wezler (Wiesbaden, 1974), pp. 257-65.
90. The consideration of the soul from the point of view of sexual feelings or sexuality is fundamental to the Jain canonical literature of both schools; cf. the Śvetāmbara Panna 8.6, and the Digambara Satkh 1.1.101 ff. Although dravya and bhāva as analytical categories are common to both Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras, the characterization of the primary and secondary sexual characteristics as dravynliṅga ("material [sexual] mark") and sexuality as bhāvaliṅga ("psychological [sexual] mark") belongs to the Digambara. For what is probably their earliest appearance see Pūjyapāda (sixth century C.E.) on TS 2.52. The Śvetāmbaras refer to the material and psychological sexual marks as external (bāhya) and internal (ābhyantara); see Nisī Cū 3570 and BrhTī 5147. For Pūjyapāda's commentary on the TS we have consulted the translation of S. A. Jain, Reality (Calcutta, 1960).
91. See Akalaṅka on TS 8.9. Similar qualities were considered to be part of the male or female "nature" by seventeenth-century European medical experts; see Daston and Park (n. 8 above), p. 428.
92. See n. 60 above. Viśesāvaśyakabhāsya (Vi Āva Bhā) 2564 points out that members of the third sex have such masculine characteristics as a beard, and that male dress, e.g., may be worn by women, so that gender assignment cannot be made on the basis of such external criteria. As for the other possible criteria that we looked at before, e.g., the possession of conceptive capacity as the essential marker of femaleness, this too is rejected on the grounds that prepubescent girls or postmenopausal women could not then be regarded as female; see Pūjyapāda on 752.52.
93. Biological sex (dravyaliṅga) is brought about by nāmakarma, whereas psychological sexuality (bhāvaliṅga) results from the nokasāyakarma; see esp. Akalaṅka on TS 2.50-51.
94. Gommatasara (Jīvakānda) 271.
95. Nisī Bhā 3571 (= Brh Bbā 5148): "The special characteristic is that each of the sexualities [vedas] can be independent of its proper locus and be present in the other wo loci." For example, a woman can equally have a female sexuality, male sexuality, or third-sex sexuality, and the same is true for men and third-sex persons. For the Śvetāmbara view of this issue see Vi Āva Bhā 2565 (cited by Abhayadeva on Thā 128), where male sexuality is the example, and Nisī Bhā 3570 (= Brh Bhā 5147) where third-sex sexuality is the example.
96. Although the Vi Āva Bhā 2564 mentions only male dress (purusavesa) that can be worn, e.g., by women, the intention is clear. For a description of the stereotypically feminine gender characteristics, see Nisī Bhā 3569-70 (= Brh Bhā 5146-5147).
97. Nisī Bhā 3506-8, 3561-62 ff. On the persons not qualified to be ordained, see Deo, History (n. 39 above), p. 140. The Digambara view of eligibility• appears to be quite straightforward; if a man is without genital defects and virile he is ordainable, but not if he is overly libidinous; essentially, a man may be considered unfit if for any reason his ordination would bring the community into disrepute. Napuṁsakas, i.e., those who are physically third sex (dravyanapuṁsaka), are denied ordination because, like women, they cannot give up the wearing of clothes; see Jainendrasiddhāntakośa, s.v. pravrajyā, veda.
98. With napuṁsaka instead of pandaka as in Brh Sū 4.4 and Thā 202; see Abhayadeva on Thā 202. Included among both unordainable men and women is the napuṁsaka. By the former a napuṁsaka in the guise of a male is meant as opposed to a napuṁsaka in the guise of a napuṁsaka, i.e., effeminate and/or transvestite; Nisī Cū 3736; also the commentary on Pravacanasāroddhāra 791. The female napuṁsaka essentially just fills a slot and nothing more is heard of her; according to Nisī Cū 3508 the female napuṁsaka experiences the napuṁsakaveda as well as the strīveda.
99. The sixteen types of napuṁsakas, according to the Brh Tī 5166-67, are (1) pandaka, (2) vātika, (3) klība, (4) kumbhin, (5) īrsya, (6) śakuni, (7) tatkarmasevi, (8) pākśikāpākśika, (9) saugandhika, (10) [āsakta], (11) varddhita, (12) cippita, (13) mantrenopahata, (14) ausadhyā upahata, (15) rsinā śapta, (16) devena śapta; cf. Zwilling (n. 29 above), p. 204; Sweet and Zwilling (n. 9 above), p. 593. Another, shorter list of fourteen napuṁsakas, with a few types not found in the longer list, is to be found in the Aṅavijjā 9.3.400-404; see Aṅgavijjā (Banaras, 1957), p. 73.
100. Compare Nisī Cū 3577 and esp. Brh Tī 5167: "ete sarve 'pi niruddhavastāyah" (!!; read niruddhavedāh following Tī on 5166) "kālāntarena napuṁsakatayā parinamanti."
101. Nisī Bhā 3564-70b (= Brh Bhā 5141-47b). In contemporary Thai Buddhism, candidates for monkhood are routinely questioned about their sexuality in order to screen out third-sex persons; see Peter A. Jackson, "From Kamma to Unnatural Vice: Thai Buddhist Accounts of Homosexuality and AIDS" (paper presented at the International Thai Studies Conference, London, July 1993).
102. See, e.g., Abhayadeva on Thā 202.
103. This discussion is found in Nisī Cū 3602-4; Brh Tī 5169-71.
104. See Nisī Cū 3587; Brh Tī 5163. Scenes of taunting of third-sex persons by children and adolescents are common in India today; see Nanda (n. 20 above), pp. 9, 50, 100.
105. For example, see sculptural representations of mendicants who are sexually aroused by laymen in Alain Danielou, La Sculpture Érotique Hindou (Paris, 1973), pp. 202-5; and the story about the third-sex monk who aroused social disapproval in Zwilling, pp. 207-8.
106. Brh Tī 2570. Compare Nisī Cū 5214.
107. Brh Tī 639.
108. Nisī Bhā 5217-24 (= Brh Bhā 2572-79).
109. Brh Bhā 5173-74, quoted in Deo, Jaina Monastic Jurisprudence (n. 37 above), p. 14.
110. Nisī Bhā 3561-62, and Abbidhānarajendra, s.v. napuṁsaka.
111. See Yuktiprabodha, translated in Jaini, Gender (n. 23 above), pp. 177-78.
112. This debate has been explicated and very fully exposed through translations of extracts from the principal commentaries in Jaini, Gender.
113. Of course, Western political dichotomies such as liberalism-conservatism have at best heuristic value in this context. Despite their theoretical spiritual equality, Jain female mendicants are formally absolutely subject to the control of male mendicants among both sects (Dundas [n. 12 above], p. 52) and the modern Śvetāmbara mendicants are much more socially conservative (i.e., hierarchical, tradition-bound) than the more individualistic Digambaras - see John E. Cort, "The Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jain Mendicant," Man 26 (1991): 651-71.
114. Although female mendicants are much more numerous and appear to have more social influence among the Śvetambaras (see Jaini, Gender, p. 26), it is a curious fact that the most prominent woman leader of a Jain sect, Campabahen Mataji, was a neo-Digambara (Dundas, p. 231). Recent developments include a nun who is head of a Śvetāmbara Sthānakavasi subsect, and a nun appointed, for the first time, to the rank of ācārya (Paul Dundas, letter to Leonard Zwilling and Michael J. Sweet, July 17, 1995). Furthermore, the Jains as a whole accord higher social and legal status to women than do Hindus (Dundas, p. 5).
115. See Satkh 1.1.92-93; text and translation in Jaini, Gender, pp. 110-11. Despite their rejection of the possibility of moksa for women, the worship of female deities is widespread among the Digambaras, as it is among the Svetāmbaras (Dundas, pp. 182-83).
116. In Śākatãyana's Strīnirvānaprakarana (SNP) in Strīnirvāna-Kevalibhuktiprakarane (Bhavnagar, 1974), p. 30;
117. the cited scripture has not been identified. For translation see Jaini, Gender, p. 76.
118. As a representation of this debate, one may note the figure of Malli[nātha], whom the Śvetāmbaras claim as the sole female among the twenty-four Jinas of our age, but whom the Digambaras insist is male (Jaini, Gender, pp. 14-15).
119. Nevertheless, even the Śvetāmbara representations of this figure (with one exception) are male, or at least without any distinguishing female characteristics, perhaps to accord with the doctrine of the genderlessness of the jīva (soul) after final liberation (see Marcus Banks, "Representing the Bodies of the Jains," in Rethinking Visual Anthroplogy, ed. Marcus Banks and Howard Murphy [New Haven, CT, in press]).
120. In his comment on Panna 1.16 (on which see n. 48 above), Malayagiri explains that the three sexes are here so called on the basis of their bodily development, rather than on psychological sexuality (veda) or dress (nepathya), i.e., gender role. He contrasts this with the Digambara view that liberation can be attained only by those with a male body.
121. SNP, p. 30.
122. Translation in Jaini, Gender, p. 76, and also pp. 163-65.
123. SNP, p. 36.
124. Translation in Jaini, Gender, p. 86.
125. SNP, pp. 37-38.
126. Translation in Jaini, Gender, pp. 89-90.
127. SNP, p. 35.
128. Translation in Jaini, Gender, p. 84.
129. Yuktiprabodha, translated in Jaini, Gender, p. 164.
130. Brh Bhā 5026 (seen. 55 above) cited by Abhayadeva on Thā 201. Homosexual activity (annamannaṁ karemāne) between monks is one of only three offenses punishable by expulsion from the order (pārañciya), the other two being criminality (duttha), i.e., committing a deadly offense against one's superior, or rape, and neglect (pammatta) of the rules regarding food and sleep. Even pious laypeople are supposed to restrict themselves to conventional heterosexual intercourse with their wives; see Jaini, Jaina Path (n. 12 above), p. 176.
131. Among the many articulate proponents of this proposition are Jeffrey Weeks, Against Nature (London, 1991), esp. pp. 10-45, 68-85. See also the works cited in n. 1 above.
132. Joseph S. Alter, "Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India," Journal of Asian Studies 53 (1994): 45-66.
133. Foucault (n. 1 above), p. 57.
134. On religio-legal sanctions against homosexual conduct in dharmaśāstra, including loss of cast and inheritance rights, see Wendy Doniger and Brian Smith trans., The Laws of Manu (New York, 1991), pp. 58-59, 68, 92-93, 177, 220, 267-68. On penalties in Buddhism, see Zwilling (n. 29 above), p. 207.
135. While the Buddhist monastic communal confession of sins, including sexual misdeeds that may result in expulsion from the order, takes place once a fortnight, on full and new moon days (posadha), the comparable Jain observance (padikakamana) is performed twice each day; Tatia, Aspects of Jaina Monasticism (n. 32 above), pp. 331-33.
136. On lay codes of conduct, see Dundas (n. 12 above), pp. 161-65; on informal social control, see Josephine Reynell, "Women and Reproduction of the Jain Community," in The Assembly of Listeners: Jains in Society, ed. Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphries (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 62-65.
137. Caelius Aurelianus (n. 5 above), p. 901. On this interpretation see Halperin, One Hundred Years (n. 1 above), p. 23.
138. See Jaini, Jaina Path, pp. 93-94; and Dundas, pp. 197-200.
139. See Magnus Hirschfeld, Geschlechtskunde: Auf Grund dreißigjähriger Forschung und Erfahrung bearbeitet, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1930), 1:543-601;
140. and Harry Oosterhuis, "Homosexual Emancipation in Germany before 1933," in Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany, ed. Harry Oosterhuis and trans. Hubert Kennedy (New York, 1991), pp. 1-2, 12-15.
141. As a representative example, see Holly Devor, "Sexual Orientation Identities, Attractions, and Practices of Female-to-Male Transsexuals," Journal of Sex Research 30 (1993): 303-15.
142. Nisī Bhā 3604-7 (= Brh Bhā 5171-74); and Deo, Jaina Monastic Jurisprudence (n. 37 above), p. 14.
143. The principal of social expedience was widely used in Jain judgments on ordination, as in passages cited in Collette Caillat, Atonements in the Ancient Rituals of the Jaina Monks (Ahmedabad, 1975), p. 58, which praise the admission of physically attractive, socially powerful, or technically skillful male postulants to the order.
144. There is some corroboratory evidence in related areas; e.g., the fact that among the Śvetāmbaras female mendicants greatly outnumber males and exert strong influence on the laity; see Jaini, Jaina Path (n. 12 above), p. 246; Reynell, pp. 60-61;
145. and N. Shanta, La Voie jaina (Paris, 1985), pp. 443-44.
146. On the other hand, the Digambaras have few female ascetics, of limited social authority (Dundas, p. 52; Jaini, Gender [n. 23 above], p. 26). This lends credence to the hypothesis that there is some connection between the great textual tradition and social realities.
147. Additional anthropological, literary, and artistic data will be extremely helpful in fleshing out the social history of the third sex among the Jains. Areas for investigation include the enormous corpus of Jain popular literature, consisting of religious legends and traditional tales, which may throw significant light on questions of gender and sexuality. Further study of Jain art (see Banks [n. 84 above]) is likely to yield important findings, as would psychological and sociological research on sex and gender roles, perceptions, and attitudes among Jain laity and mendicants. There appears to be no existing ethnographic research about third-sex persons among the Jains (Serena Nanda, letter to Leonard Zwilling and Michael J. Sweet, March 1994).