Agam 05 Ang 05 Study Of Bhagvati Vyakhya Prajnapti Sutra

Author(s): Suzuko Ohira
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 204

174
SECTION E
KARMA
Part 1
A Preliminary Review
450
The Jaina theory of karma took a long course of development. The Prajnapana (XXII - XXVII, cf. Ch. I, Sec. IV; XXI.2 is a later accretion) conducts a discussion of the karma theory in terms of bandha-vedana within the class of mula prakrtis, and uttara prakrtis are here in only the early stage of formulation. This text is not even acquainted with the well-known fourfold divisions of karma bandha by prakrti-sthiti-anubhava-pradesa, in which prade's a bandha is kept totally intact, and anubhava is discussed in the sense of karmic fruition but not in the sense of the intensity of karma bandha. This is quite natural in the context of the history of theorization, because the four standpoints by dravya-kşetra-kala-bhava, after which the bandha quadruplet was formulated, came to be thoroughly established only in the fourth-fifth canonical stages. The standard list of uttara prakrtis was finalized in the fifth canonical stage by the time of Umasvati, and the fourfold types of karma bandha was formulated by the time of the Uttara XXXIII.
451
In the immediate post-canonical age, the Satkhandagama for the first time conducts a discussion of bandha-udaya-satta of both mula and uttara prakrtis in terms of the sthana triplet, i.e., 14 jivasthanas, 14 marganasthanas and 14 gunasthanas. Thence the technicalities of karma theory develop noticeably up to the early medieval age. However, the karma doctrine represented here in the Gommatasara, for instance, is a product of scholasticism, which deals with it in terms of a complicated mathematical computation, that even advanced readers fail to understand. This fantastic product of the Jaina theory of karma must be correlative with their pessimistic reality of salvation that no one after Jambu can attain moksa anymore. It appears as if the karma specialists in those days attempted to bury this utter vacuity of reality in an equally fantastic abstraction of the karma theory in order to defend the raison d'être of Jainism itself.
452 This itself is enough for us to grasp how slowly the doctrine of karma took the
course of its development. According to MV's world view, vaira works as the principle of retribution and as the cause of transmigration within the purview of arambha or himsa. The Sutrakrta 1.2.1.4, for instance, expresses the idea that beings are seized by self-wrought deeds, which is stated in the same context of the vaira theory. According to the later doctrine of karma, eight mula prakrtis with so many subtypes are the determinants of the total personality of & being, either psychological, physical, spiritual or social. These karma prakrtis thus represent the universal make-up of beings in samsara. Here the concept of arambha or himsa totally recedes into the background as an impor
tant cause of binding some karma prakrtis (cf. T.S. VI.16 and 18), and these