To the textual student of Jainism, it can often seem that the various elements of the Jain monastic community had a quite remarkable sense of identity. The terse statement of the doxographer Gunaratna (1343– 1418), that the Jains were originally not divided but subsequently split into the two sects of śvetāmbara and Digambara, conceals a long and diffuse history, from the initial, complex processes which resulted in ‘schism’, to the appearance of the vast array of sub-sects and further offshoots which developed later, many having their own traditions of origin recorded by their respective followers. Accordingly, it would be easy to judge as mere pedantry the Digambara preoccupation with and affiliation according to the type of whisk used by the monk or to ascribe to petty sectarian squabbling the glee with which Hemavijaya records in the Vijayapraśasti (10.3–11) the defeat at Ahmedabad in the sixteenth century of the members of the Kharatara Gaccha, a śvetāmbara reforming sect, in debate with a sūri of the Tapā Gaccha, another śvetāmbara reforming sect. But serious issues were at stake in such situations. The Jain monastic tradition exemplifies perfectly the characteristic Indian desire to define precisely the nature of that correct behaviour by which an individual could actually be seen to be the adherent of a particular sect, and also to establish and validate descent from and channels of communication with a standard authority which, in the Jain case, was Mahāvīra and his immediate disciples.