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458 THE ADYAR LIBRARY BULLETIN or a living being. For there cannot be the least doubt that with regard to this important distinction a pindi is considered to be a dead thing as this expression whatever may be its precise meaning denotes in any case a variety of food which is prepared by cooking, i.e. by killing the seeds if this was not already done even earlier. In contradistinction to a pindi the young green barley plants in the field are evidently considered as living beings to eat which constitutes an act of himsa in that it causes their separation from life (pranaviyoga).
6.2.
It seems advisable to dwell a little longer on the concept of himsä as implied here. For, it has clearly two aspects which have to be distinguished, though ultimately they can not be separated from each other, cither doctrinally or historically. On the one hand it is the consumption of seeds capable of germination which is considered as himså, on the other an act of himsă is taken to be committed by eating plants in the field. Many of the grammatical authors quoted above contribute considerably to the clarification of this latter idea by their explanations of the expression kşetrastha etc.: yet in that they think of the cereal plants only, although with explicit reference to the various stages of growth, beginning with sprouting, they pass through, one might gather the impression that is only these plants themselves which are regarded as living beings by them. Nägesa, however, expressly states (v. $ 2.4. above) that the idea of caitanya likewise includes the
CATTLE, FIELD AND BÄRLEY 459 seeds (bija), and, I think, he is right, and this not only as far, as Kaiyata is concerned: None of the other grammarians would have denied that seeds are equally living beings, and the explanation given by Väsudevadiksita, viz ksetre prarüdham alūnam sasyam iha vitaksitam, (cf. § 2. 5. 3 above) has accordingly to be taken to imply that even if the plants have been killed by reaping them after ripening, the seeds they yield are in their turn something living. That is to say, vegetal life is seen under two aspects in accordance with essential biological processes, particularly clearly observable in annual economic plants; any seed capable of germination is a living being because the fact that it contains life becomes manifest by the very process of sprouting, and the plants betray their animatenesss by the very process of growing out of such seeds and continuing to grow until they die or are killed.
There can hence be no doubt that the basis of all this is but one idea of animateness. This is strikingly confirmed by the material studied by H.-P. Schmidt 68. Both the aspects mentioned above are attested in his sources, too; yet, as most convincingly shown by him, they are but facets of one basic idea which he traces back to the expressed animism of Vedic times. This ‘archaic' animism was in India, as is well known, best preserved, i.e. almost unaltered, in Jainism 'according to which the whole world is animated not only animals and plants but also the elements earth, fire, water, and air consist in atomic individual souls'. And evidently it is this their doctrine to which Jinendrabuddhi refers