Lord Mahavira Vol 01

SR No.: 023276
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Rampuria
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati Institute
Publication Year: 2001
Total Pages: 320
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 310

The Fordmakers
having knowledge and sentience, there is nonetheless nothing with which it can be compared. Its being is without form, there is no condition of the unconditioned. It is not sound nor form nor smell nor flavour nor touch or anything like that. This is what I say.
301
(AS 1.5.6.4; trans. by Jacobi, emended) The early Jain texts describe in nascent form concepts which were to be discussed in greater depth at a later period. They make no attempt to give an account of the process by which the soul is reborn nor the precise nature of its relationship with karma. The cosmography which later Jainism was to elaborate at such length's unknown, although there is acceptance of the existence of hells (SKS 1.5), and the basic ontological categories of classical Jain metaphysics are not found in systematic form at this stage. The householder's life is stigmatised as worthless and dangerous and the stress is very much on the difficult but noble life of the ascetic which, if performed correctly, is regarded as leading automatically to deliverance. However, there is only very sporadic reference to the Great Vows and there is found no attempt to adumbrate a formal code of ethics and monastic practice, beyond the stipulation that the passions must be conquered through withdrawal from the world of the senses and that any sort of violence or possession is bad.47 One of the old Jain names for the Acaranga is the Veda and indeed many similarities to the early Jain world view can be found both in the brahmanical literature of ritual theory and in the Upanishads. The Chandogya Upanishad (3.17.4), for example, describes the appropriate gifts to priests as being austerity, generosity (dana), uprightness, non-violence and truthfulness, qualities which, with the exception of generosity which is not discussed seriously in the early Jain texts, are not at variance with Mahâvîra's ethical prescriptions. The statement of the Acaranga, 'that which is the soul is that which knows, that which is the knower is the soul, that by which one knows is the soul' (AS 1.5.5.5), is very much redolent of Upanishadic modes of expression, as can also be seen by the Jain source's use of aya, the Prakrit equivalent of Sanskrit atman, the usual word for self or soul in the Upanishads, rather than Jiva which was to become the Jain technical term for a life-monad.48