Sruta Sarita

SR No.: 001940
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre
Publication Year: 2001
Total Pages: 310
Language: English, Prakrit, Hindi
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Articles
File Size: 18 MB

Page 54

PROHIBITION AND INDIAN CULTURE
delightful to the stupid.”20
Moreover it also should be noted here that the Buddha has not included this vice in that of violence, because he has separated this vice from that of violence while enumerating ten precepts to be followed by his followers.
But this does not mean that after taking the vows all the monks could avoid the drinks. In the Jātaka (81) there is a story of the Sāgata who was a sthavira, that is an elder monk. He was powerful enough to subdue a poisonous serpent with his miraculous power but when he was offered the rare type of wine he and his other pupils could not resist the drink. This shows that it was difficult even for the Buddha himself to control all of his own pupils as regards the drinks.
Here it may be interesting to quote the Jātaka verseWhen the effects of the wine were removed the ascetics realized their foolishness and said, "We drank, we danced, we sang, we wept. It was well that, when we drank the drink that steals away the senses, we were not transformed to apes".
In the times after Lord Mahāvīra and the Buddha the Jaina monks gave more attention to the prohibition. This is evident from Mūlācāra and such other works, wherein we find the liquor as one of the item of the great sins, because it is the cause of non-restraint (p. 284, gāthā 156). Ācārya Haribhadra has written a short treatise entitled Madyapānadüşanāsatka wherein an example of an ascetic is given to show that how he believing less sin in the drink lost all his powers and after death took up the lower birth.
Acārya Hemacandra, the prominent Jaina Saint of Gujarat, has clearly mentioned that the liquor is not to be drunk even by a laymanal. Here we have clear evidence to the fact that in his times it was a rule for layman not to use the spirited drinks and this rule is followed by the later generation upto this time.
Ācārya Hemacandra mentions in his Yogaśāstra some of the vices resulting from the intoxicating drinks22.
“Even the most skilful person loses his intellect; the drunkard does not make difference between his wife and his mother; he loses the discriminative power and as a result he considers his master as servant and a servant as his master; a drunkard falls down on the earth and rolls and dogs discharge urine in his mouth; goes out of his senses and lie down naked in the street; gives out his secrets unconsciously; his fame, beauty, intelligence, and the wealth are removed from him; he dances as if caught by the devil, cries like an anguished, rolls on earth like a person having inflammatory fever, the spirited drinks are like poison and so they make the body unsteady, the senses tired and the soul