Harmless Soul

SR No.: 001196
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: W J Johnson, Dayanand Bhargav
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas
Publication Year: 1995
Total Pages: 372
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Principle
File Size: 20 MB

Page 46

32 Harmless Souls connected, for parigraha includes that complex of sins which involve a positive attitude towards a particular object, while ārambha comprises those sins which involve a negative attitude. 82 Thus parigraha may be translated as 'attachment to worldly things' or 'possessiveness', as well as 'possession' itself. And such an attitude directed towards a particular object or person necessarily entails an attitude of ārambha towards other objects or persons. Thus all ārambha may be traced back to some case of parigraha . Or as Dixit puts it,
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Taken as a whole parigraha signifies attachment for things worldly - where things include both the material goods and the social relatives, and ārambha the acts injurious to others undertaken with a view to satisfying the demands of this attachment.83
(Like kaṣāya in its earliest sense (see below], parigraha leads to violence and thus to bondage, but it is not the direct cause of the latter - i.e. it is the cause of violence but not the direct cause of bondage.) Parigraha is thus clearly associated with the life of the householder, for it is the householder who is attached to worldly things. It is a life, moreover, which is inextricably bound up with violence, actual and potential. Thus the Sūyagadamga characterises householders as sārambhā and sapariggahā- 'killers' and 'acquirers of property' in Jacobi's translation.84
82 Ibid. p. 5. 83 Ibid. pp. 18-19. 84 Jacobi 1895, p. 350. See Sūy. 2.1.43-46. Sūy. 2.1.43 reads:
iha khalu 'gāratthā sārambhā sapariggahā, samtegaiyā samaņā māhanā vi sārambhā sapariggahā, je ime tasā thāvarā pāņā te sayam samārambhanti anneņa vi samārambhāvemti annam pi samārambhatam samanujānanti
'Here, indeed, householders are killers (of beings) and acquirers of property, and so are even some Śramanas and Brāhmaṇas. They themselves kill moving and unmoving living beings, have them killed by another person, or consent to another's killing them.' - Jacobi's trans.