Jain Journal 1976 10

SR No.: 520044
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 1976
Total Pages: 44
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 3 MB

Page 23

OCTOBER, 1976
daughters of bankers. In the same way, Abhayakumara met several bankers at Rajagrha alone.
It is normal that in such a society certain vices of economic nature would creep in. In the list of gross transgressions of the vow of honesty the Uvāsagdasão mentions smuggling, use of false weights and measures, trade in contrabands, etc. In the Avašyaka Sūtra among partial transgressions (aticāra) of the third vow (adatta) figures abetment of theft, receiving stolen property, illegal traffic, false weight and adulteration. To check such malpractices and other offences, it seems that kings used to issue what may be called pass-ports and licences (rāyavarasāsana). The Mahānisiha Süya contain the story of the son of a maid-servant who was brought up by the king and later appointed superintendent of a slaughter-house (süņādhivai). Deterrent measures were also taken. Thus the merchant Dhanva of Rajagrha was tied in a wooden frame for a slight offence.
Among the liberal professions mention has to be made of the physicians some of whom were definitely quacks. To cure an unfortunate woman of the love-spell of her captor-seducer, she was made to drink milk mixed with the powdered bones of the wicked philanderer who was a frier. If this was witchcraft pure and simple, a healthy development is also discernible. There were colonies of leper. In the story of Sripala who was then afflicted with leprosy, his mother started for Kausambi where lived a physician who had the reputation of curing all sorts of leprosy.
The Sudras as a caste existed only in theory. Even then like the term Brahmana, it came to signify a mode of conduct or a state of attitude. In the Uttaradhyayana Sūtra it is stated that the possessor of good qualities is a Brahmana and the reverse, a Sudra. The same text contrasts the Brahmanas and the Ksatriyas with the Candalas. It will thus appear that in the early Jaina texts there is a tendency to use terms Sudra and Candala as synonymous. In the same section of Uttarādhyayana mentior.ed above the Candalas have been equated with worms and ants. That is to say, juridic personality was denied to the Sudra-Candalas. In this sense, only a slave would have to be called a Sudra or Candala. However, Harikesabala was born in a Candala family and explicitly or implicitly had no stigma of servitude attached to him. He is said to have possessed all the virtues and practised the rules. But the inferriority this social status vis-a-vis the Brahmanas is clearly established from the fact that when he had a quarrel with the Brahmanas, they gave him a sound beating. In connexion with the Sudra Candalas, mention