Five Vows And Six Avashyakas

SR No.: 269507
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Klaus Bruhn
Publisher: Klaus Bruhn
Total Pages: 27
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 3 MB

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VERE-NOW4U :Bruhn : The Fundamentals of Jaina Ethics - Introduction http://www.here-now4u.de/eng/spr/religion/Bruhn/einleitung.html
Avashyaka). Since the roles for laymen and laywomen are so radically different, many codes of behaviour are not applicable to women at all. Furthermore, the attitude toward women is ambivalent. There are songs of praise to enlightened nuns and laywomen but there are also countless diatribes concerning the female gender as such.
Unless stated otherwise, we use "monk" below for monks and nuns, and "lay-follower" for laymen and laywomen..
In terms of both form and content, the Avashyakas represent a special development within early Jaina literature. Together, the six Avashyaka chapters form the Avashyaka-Sutra (sutra meaning in this case "manual"), and this Avashyaka-Sutra is a small work of the Jaina canon. Strictly speaking, it is midway between a manual for ritual and a literary composition. It consists mainly of moral declarations: I repent my sins; I shall abstain from sin; I must not sin. But all this is backed by dogmatic concepts, and the Avashyaka-Sutra is both product and origin of dogmatic and ritualistic developments. It is a compilation of earlier and contemporary lore, and by way of its structure and contents it is at the root of numerous later developments -- literature and practised ritual. What we attempt is a sort of time exposure of a single phase -- the "Avashyaka-Sutra" as we have it -- without references to all its sources and without references to the later developments.
Below we present the full text of the first three Avashyakas: Prakrit text (Middle Indian -- different from Sanskrit or Old Indian) and an English translation. Introductory paragraphs have been added. This is followed by the presentation of the Avashyakas IV to VI. These are more copious; thus we had to be selective for brevity's sake. The titles of the six Avashyakas are in agreement with their contents, and they belong to the vocabulary of the texts. The meaning of "Samayika" (Avashyaka I) is not quite clear, however, and the word must remain untranslated.
The Avashyaka tradition was first studied by ERNST LEUMANN 2 (1859-1931) and in the German version we have reprinted LEUMANN's German translation of Avashyaka I-III. The present English translation follows LEUMANN's rendering in a general matter, but the actual wording is directly derived from the original Prakrit (Sutra text) and Sanskrit (commentary text). LEUMANN's deep study of Vandana (Avashyaka III) demonstrates the complexity of the subject and the need for further investigations.
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The basis of this paper is a short lecture held in Berlin on April 20, 1997 in Dr. N. K. JAIN'S Yoga School. The lecture was held as part of a programme to celebrate the birthday of Mahavira ("Mahavira-Jayanti"). In our paper an attempt is made to introduce an original tract into the description of Jainism. Some of the footnotes will not interest the general reader but had to be inserted for one reason or another. -- I am indebted to K. BUTZENBERGER for a number of suggestions which have facilitated my treatment of the ahimsa issue. My special thanks go to R. Radzinski who has read the text of the article repeatedly and improved in many cases its language.
2 E. LEUMANN, Übersicht über die Avashyaka-Literatur, Hamburg 1934. In addition to the earlier standard publications we have used R.WILLIAMS, Jaina Yoga (Oxford 1963), C.CAILLAT, Atonements in the Ancient Rituals of the Jaina Monks (Ahmedabad 1975), and, for modern Jainism, P.FLÜGEL, Askese und Devotion: Das rituelle System der Terapanth Svetambara Jains (doctoral thesis, Mainz 1994).
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