The Rise of the Sthanakvasi Tradition

The Sthanakvasi tradition is one of the principal non-image-worshipping branches of Svetambara Jainism, distinguished by its rejection of temple and idol worship and by the practice of its monks and nuns of wearing a cloth over the mouth. Emerging in the seventeenth century from the aniconic reform initiated by Lonka Shah in the previous era, the Sthanakvasi sect gave enduring institutional form to the conviction that authentic Jainism should dispense with the veneration of images.

The name Sthanakvasi derives from the practice of worshipping and gathering in a sthanaka, a plain hall or place of assembly, rather than in an image-containing temple. In place of the elaborate ritual of image worship, the Sthanakvasi emphasise meditation, scriptural study, the recitation of prayers and the observance of the vows, holding that religion is a matter of inner discipline and the ethical life rather than external ceremony directed toward idols.

The tradition traces its formation to the reform movement descended from Lonka Shah, the fifteenth-century Gujarati layman who had first argued that image worship was inconsistent with the principle of non-violence and unsupported by the original scriptures. Lonka Shah's followers persisted as an aniconic current within Svetambara Jainism, but it was in the seventeenth century that the movement took on a settled institutional shape. Around the middle of that century, the ascetic Lavji, together with other reforming figures, established a disciplined mendicant order committed to the aniconic principle, and this order became the core of the Sthanakvasi tradition.

A distinctive and visible feature of Sthanakvasi ascetics is the muhpatti, a small rectangular piece of white cloth worn permanently over the mouth. This practice expresses the intense concern for non-violence that motivated the reform, for it is intended to prevent harm to the minutest airborne life forms and to guard the ascetic's speech. The muhpatti, kept in place at all times, became one of the marks by which Sthanakvasi monks and nuns are recognised, distinguishing them from the image-worshipping Murtipujak Svetambaras, whose ascetics hold the cloth in the hand and raise it to the mouth only when speaking.

The Sthanakvasi accept the authority of a body of Svetambara scripture, though they recognise a somewhat smaller canon than the image-worshipping tradition, and they place strong emphasis on the study and application of these texts. Their religious life centres on the ascetic community and its guidance of the laity in ethical conduct, austerity and meditation. The absence of temple ritual gives the tradition a markedly austere and scripturally focused character.

In the eighteenth century, the Sthanakvasi tradition itself underwent a further reform when Acharya Bhikshu, dissatisfied with what he saw as laxity in monastic discipline, broke away to found the Terapanth in 1760. Thus the aniconic movement descended from Lonka Shah ultimately produced two distinct traditions, the Sthanakvasi and the Terapanth, both rejecting image worship but organised separately.

The Sthanakvasi remain a significant community within Svetambara Jainism, especially in northern and western India, with their own lineages of ascetics, their own institutions and their own vigorous religious life. Their history exemplifies the recurring capacity of Jainism for reform and internal diversity, and the enduring power of the appeal to scripture and to the principle of non-violence as grounds for challenging established practice. The Sthanakvasi tradition preserves, in living form, the reforming vision first articulated by Lonka Shah more than five centuries ago.