International Journal Of Jaina Studies Vol 01 To 03 2005 To 2007

SR No.: 022773
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Peter Flugel
Publisher: Hindi Granth Karyalay
Publication Year: 2008
Total Pages: 202
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 60

significance of the material worship (dravya-pūjā) of Jaina Tirthankaras. Before proceeding to this, however, I shall summarise my argument so far.
Beyond wha Dundas (2002: 190) has called the 'monastic idealisation found in the handbooks of lay behaviour, there is, in my view, no general expectation that the laity should try to conform to some universal standard of ahimsā. Indeed, the general attitude is reminiscent of the Hindu particularism I outlined at the beginning: 'For those people it is not a sin'. This is as much as to say, there are higher values, but they are not universally applicable: it is not a sin for them because of who they are. The difference between this and the Hindu case, of course, is that a lay Jain can become 'someone else', a monk or a nun, if they choose to do so, whereas a Hindu cannot change his or her caste. Indeed, it is precisely this possibility of a legitimised change of status via renunciation which, in the Jain case, allowed some monastic writers to create an asceticised and karmically integrated behavioural ladder which, in theory, lay people are to ascend in their quest for better rebirths and ultimately, liberation.
To consider this in more general terms: if the ascetic doctrines concerning himsā, and its bad karmic effects, are taken as definitive constraints on progress towards a better rebirth, let alone liberation, then most lay Jains are, at best, either soteriologically stalled or crawling along in the slow lane. That such ascetic doctrines are not in fact taken in this way (either by the laity or by contemporary ascetics vis à vis the laity) is suggested by the fact that lay Jains today (and this is probably true of much of the past as well) very seldom formally take the anuvrata (or lesser vow) of ahimsā (which, as we have seen, is clearly based on the ascetic mahāvrata). Instead, they express their identity as Jains through the basic ahimsā of a vegetarian diet, and through worshipping asceticism in various ways, rather than actually practising it.
Paul Dundas (2002: 191) points out the difference between the 'ways in which lay people and ascetics envisage non-violence': '[t]he layman is typically portrayed by the ascetic writers as being by his very nature continually implicated in violence and destruction, even when he is acting for ostensibly pious motives'. From the ascetic's point of view, therefore, the best way to escape these dilemmas of lay existence is through
Caste groupings have sometimes changed their caste habits in an attempt to raise their staius - a phenomenon known to anthropologists as 'Sanskritization' - demonstrating that purity is as much a social as a moral or soteriological concept in the Indian context. The fact that the Jain tradition is composed of at least two ways of life - lay and monastic - is, of course, the inevitable consequence of its historical development from a loose, ascetic association into a 'religion' with a wider following. The effective particularism ofits ethics is therefore also a function of that historical change.