________________
THE JAINA RĀMĀYANAS
159
which so many Buddhist texts possess,"17 the Jaina Rāmāyana is a notable exception to this dictum and in the main manifests the large-heartedness of the Jaina religion and its adherents. The Jainas acheived what the Buddhists did not, in humanising the character of Rāvana and lifting him to the heights of tragic sublimity. It is worthwhile to know how this transformation came about.
The Jaina religion claims to be a universal religion. Even animals and the denizens of hell are endowed with the possibility of becoming perfect if they believe in, and act according to, the dictates of the Jaina religion. However, bad and degraded a soul inay be under the fetters of Karma, it can realize its own true self when it seizes hold of a proper and auspicious occasion. The doctrine of Karma plays a very prominent part in the Journey of the soul through various cycles of births and deaths. Looked at from this point of view the character of Rāvana does not evoke any feeling of hatred or disgust. Instead, it draws out our sympathy. Vimalasūri took this sympathetic attitude. In the opening section of his book, he has already told us that Rāvana was not a Rākṣasa addicted to savage habits. To Vālmīki, Rāvana was a monster, a non-Aryan, a terrible and hideous Rākşasa, who was the 'scourge of the world' of gods and men. There is no bright spot in that dark picture. It appears as though Rāvana is the sum-total of all the evil in the world, as though he is evil incarnate. Vimalasūri took a different attitude - a thoroughly human one. Human nature cannot be perfectly good or perfectly bad. It is a mixture of both good and evil. It is the predominance of the one over the other that makes man good or bad. So the picture of Rāvana as given by Valmiki suffers from a gross exaggeration. It smacks of the racial prejudice of an Aryan towards a non-Aryan. Vimalasūri realized this injustice done to Rāvana and at one stroke - not of pen only but of imagination also-humanized him. At once the demon's ungainly outward shape disappeared like a dark cloud. It became beautiful. Rāvana now shines in all the glory of outward form that is the gift for man. He becomes almost a Cupid as far as his bodily perfection is concerned.
17 HIL., II-476.