Sambodhi 1973 Vol 02

SR No.: 520752
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1973
Total Pages: 417
Language: English, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Gujarati
Classification: Magazine, India_Sambodhi, & India
File Size: 14 MB

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30
K, K. Dixit
was that this category was decoupled from vedana which remained an ontological category even in the eyes of the classical Jaina theoretecians,
Broadly speaking, this was the path traversed by the Jaina treatment of ethical problems from the days of the Acarūnga I Srutaskandha and Sutrakstanga I Śrutaskandha down to the days of Umāsvati.
However, things cannot be left there. For what has thus far been supplied is a mere skeleton of the matter, a skeleton that stands 10 need of being provided with flesh and blood. And to this task we address our selves next.
In the times of Buddha and Mahavira the social atmosphere in India must have been somehow favourable for the growth of monastic communities. So many of them did in fact appear on the scene and two historically most important of them were those following Buddhism and Jainism, The latter-day Buddhism And Jajnism differed from one another in so many well known ways but what distinguished the two in the beginning is a matter of more or less valid conjecture. All evidence-primary, secondary, and still more remote - tends to confirm the surmise that Jainism demanded from a monk harsher austerities than did Buddhism. The question is if this particular point of difference has a social significance; it seems to have at least some. Thus all the monastic communities of those days stood for a renunciation of the regular society-that being the very first condition of their comlag into existence. But since all these communities depended on the regular society Itself for their daily requirements like food, clothing sbelter, etc. the harsher austerities a community chose to practise the more uncompromising attitude it could adopt towards the doings of the regular society. Here one might ask as to why at all a monastic community should adopt an uncompromising attitude towards the regular society; and by way of answer one should be told that such an attitude was implicit in the very circumstance of world-renunciation on the part of a monastic community, For why should a monk take leave of the world if in his eyes this world can possibly be a fit seat of residence ? Thus it seems quite plausible that a comparatively more austere code of the Jaina monastic community was indicative of its comparatively more hositle attitude towards the regular society. Of course, the question is yet full of difficulties, for It might be pointed out that a Jaina could as well be a householder as he could be a monk ; and since that was obviously the case in later bistorical times one might ask as to why the same was not the case in the bogioning. In order to answer this question one must have before his eyes a still more concrete picture of the social conditions of the times of Buddha and Mahavira, Let us see how that proves helpful.