Yasastilaka and Indian Culture

SR No.: 001609
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur
Publication Year: 1968
Total Pages: 566
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Story, Literature, & Culture
File Size: 16 MB

Page 144

6. YASASTILAKA AS A RELIGIOUS ROMANCE
Judged by these standards, Yasastilaka is clearly a dharmakathā. Apart from the fact that it is a comprehensive manual of Jaina moral and religious doctrines, its purpose is to illustrate the great doctrine of ahimsa and its manifold implications. Yasodhara, it will be remembered, had to undergo grievous suffering in several births even for the sin of sacrificing the paste model of a cock with the idea of killing. This aspect of the story brings into relief certain moral and religious issues which throw interesting light on the Jaina view of ahimsa.
In the first place, the practice of sacrificing the effigy of an animal seems to have been an expedient favoured by those who were opposed to animal sacrifices as such, and instances of this are recorded not only in Indian but also Greek literature. It is stated, for example, in Rajatarangini 3. 7 that during the reign of Meghavahana, an ancient king of Kashmir, who prohibited animal slaughter in the kingdom, it was the custom to sacrifice butter models of animals in Vedic rites and those of paste in the Bhutayajfia offerings. In later times Madhvācārya is said to have introduced a reform consisting in the substitution of similar models of rice-flour for live animals in Vedic ritual. As regards Greek tradition, Philostratus likewise says in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the Greek saint and mystic of the first century A. D., that Empedocles of Acragas (in Sicily), made at Olympia a bull out of pastry (pemma poiïsamenos) and sacrificed it to the god, showing thereby that he approved of the sentiments of Pythagoras. Apollonius himself, who was opposed to animal sacrifices, is said to have condemned blood offerings in the temple at Alexandria, and sacrificed in the fire, by way of contrast, a plasma interpreted as a frankincense model of a bull (V. XXV). It is interesting to note that Apollonius refers in this connection to Indian sentiments, perhaps Buddhist or Jain. When the Egyptian priest sneered at his disapproval of animal sacrifices by saying that no one was so clever as to make corrections in the rites of the
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1 तस्य राज्ये जिनस्येव मारविद्वेषिणः प्रभोः । ऋतौ घृतपशुः पिष्टपशुर्भूतबला व भूत् ॥.
2 See Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. XVI, p. 378.
3
Book I, chap. I (Loeb Classical Library). Philostratus wrote about 217 A. D. Diogenes Laertius VIII. 53 records a statement that Empedocles sacrificed a bull made out of honey and barley-meal in honour of the Sacred envoys. It may be noted that the early Egyptian king Amenhotep IV (fourteenth century B. C.) is said to have offered in his temple bloodless sacrifices, chiefly of incense. He suppressed the worship of Amen and of the old gods of Egypt, and led a short-lived religious revolu tion in favour of the god Aten, which represented a solar monotheism based on the worship of the disc of the sun. Budge: Egypt, p. 146. cf. Erman: Handbook of Egyption Religion, p. 63 ff. and Breasted: Development of Religion and Thought in ancient Egypt, p. 319 ff.