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CHAPTER IV
MATERIAL CULTURE
“In the life of man the first and foremost are food and clothing. To man these two are the fetter and chain which bind him to the field of rebirth".1 This statement of contemporary Chinese traveller I-Tsing virtually represents the ascetic spirit of our Jaina author as well. However, it is doubtless to assume that the ordinary life of worldly man is usually governed by these two factors, and that man is simply not satisfied to take them as bare necessities of life. The innume. rable varieties of food and drink mentioned in our text and the various efforts at the embellishment of the person—the fine and costly clothes, the ornments decorating the body from hair to toe, the flowers and the garlands, the sweet and agreeable smell of the scents and perfumes purifying the air all around, all claim for a highly aesthetic taste of the people. The author widely refers to the luxuries of the materialistic life2 in orderto show its contrast with the hard and rigorous monastic life, and warn the monks of the untold hardships of the monkhood before venturing to embrace the monastic life. Any attraction or attachment towards the artistic and aesthetic aspects of life was no doubt a disgrace to the monk,3 but a virtually opposite view of the material-minded people who took the monks to be “dead-persons' (msta;. because of their renunciation of the
1. Takakusu, A Record of the Buddhist Religion, p. 72, 2. NC. 2, p. 12; NC. 4, p. 3. 3. NO. 2, pp. 212, 220. 4. aai wat trang HIV aa-NC. 2, p. 286.
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