Religious texts often ground institutional authority, but what are the consequences when authority is made to rest almost entirely on a text? Can a text bear the full weight of a leadership system, and how does it shape the community formed around it? The Śikṣāpatrī of the Swaminarayan Sampraday has been repeatedly invoked both institutionally and in courts of law to legitimise hereditary ācārya leadership. This article re-examines that authority through a comparative analysis of the text’s recensional history and patterns of institutional and legal use, arguing that its leadership function was produced through redaction, retroactive attribution, and selective deployment rather than inherited authorship. A comparison between the 145-verse and 212-verse recensions demonstrates that key passages most frequently cited to legitimate hereditary leadership are absent from the earliest recoverable form of the text. By situating these textual developments alongside alternative models of authority articulated within the tradition, this article highlights the contingent and interpretive nature of textual authority in the formation of religious institutions and the fragility of grounding leadership exclusively in scriptural foundations.
Avni Chag (Mon,) studied this question.