Adda Or Oldest Extant Dispute Between Jains And Heretics

Author(s): W B Bollee
Publisher: W B Bollee

Page 20

430
W. B. BOLLEE
sva-varaha-vānara-hasti-vrata. The Niddesa-atthakathā 271,34ff. gives us details on the elephant vow: "from today on I will follow the way of the elephants." People with this intention walk, stand, sit, lie and evacuate the way elephants do. Others when seeing elephants lift up a trunk and utterly imitate their way of going. These are the people who are under a vow regarding elephants."35 We would not call these men tāpasas or even religious at all. The hatthi-vattikas are the only elephantomaniacs we have found a serious description of sofar. What is said about the hatthi-tāvasas in our text is a 'clear case of odium theologicum, I believe, especially, because it concerns killing of an animal whose flesh is not kosher for Hindus or for Buddhists. Perhaps the text author/redactor has thought up this kind of "ascetic" as the climax of a series of abominable unbelievers.
In accordance with their vow they should in fact have been vegetarians and the author of Suy 2, 6 will have chosen this strange sect to make Jain monks abhorrent to meat-eating unbelievers.36
(Ardraka speaks:)
2, 6, 53
samvaccharenâvi ya egam egam päṇam haṇanta a-niyatta-dosa sesäṇa jiväna vahe na lagga siya ya thovam gihino vi tamhä
c: thus J; TLV: vaheņa
IF ONE ONLY ONCE ANNUALLY KILLS A LIVING BEING AND THUS DOES NOT STOP DOING WRONG ONE IS OF COURSE NOT BURDENED WITH THE DEATH OF/GUILTY OF KILLING OTHER BEINGS, BUT (ya) THERE MAY BE LITTLE (distance/difference) FOR A MERE HOUSEHOLDER FROM SUCH A ONE/THAT (recluse)
Siya etc.: both commentaries seem to take gihino as a plural (Cu 445,3; ȚII 157a 8). Jacobi does not translate tamha which seems superfluous in the sense of tasmāt kāraṇāt (T II 157a 10).