Jaina Community a Social Survey

SR No.: 007019
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Vilas Sangve
Publisher: Popular Book Depot Bombay
Publication Year: 1980
Total Pages: 484
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 91

Social Divisions in the Jaina Community
not only optional as in the case of the arrival of a guest, the Ashtaka sacrifices offerd to the Fathers, and marriage, but compulsory on certain occasions and ceremonies. At Śrāddhas, or periodical oblations to the manes, the sacrifice of cows is recommended, as subtsances like rice, barley, sesamum, fruits, etc. keep the manes satisfied for a month, the flesh of goats for six months, while beef satisfies them for a yeat.3 Meat was almost compulsory at the Annaprāśana (or first feeding with solid food) ceremony of a child and from then till death and cremation, sacrificing of animals was necessary on most of the ceremonial occasions of life.
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In the latter part of the Vedic period women had practically been reduced to the status of Sudras. Like the latter, they were debarred from the right of initiation and investment with the sacred thread. They were considered to have no business with sacred texts. In many passages we find that woman and Śūdra were bracketed together. The sight of women was considered as inauspicious and people were asked to avoid seeing women, Śūdras, dead bodies, etc.4 From this it appears that woman had practically no place in the religious life of the society and as such she was neglected and degraded by the people.
Thus the Vedic society was class-ridden in the sense that unusual importance was given to the Brahmin class to the detriment of other classes and nobody was allowed to change his class. People widely indulged in meat-eating and the sacrificial rites were the main religious rites. Women were completely excluded from the religious field. Against these glaring draw-backs of the Vedic society, so far as the historical period is concerned, Pārsvanātha and Mahāvīra had to fight. They recognised the division of society into four classes but based them on activities and not on. birth. They gave full freedom to one and all, including women and Šūdras, to observe religious practices and admitted them into their religious order.5 They launched an attack against meat-eating and the performance of sacrificial rites. In this connection Dr. N. K. Dutt observes: "Animal sacrifice had been of so long standing among the Aryans and such was the respect for the authority of the Vedas which made it obligatory to sacrifice with flesh offerings, that the abolition of sacrifices, even of cows, became a very slow process, affecting only a very small minority, the intellectual section of the people, and might not have succeeded at all if Jainism and
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