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.11.
CONCLUSION
In keeping with their taste for order and methods, the Jainas constructed a disciplinary system which is rigorously coherent - at least in : appearance.
In reality, the classifications which they adopt seem sometimes rather superficial. They leave some points unresolved, and there are contradictions in matters of detail. This is because, inspite of the temptation of scholastic, tradition respected the facts of a situation instead of sacrificing them to the requirements of pure form.
The atonements occupy a clearly defined place the front rank of "interior mortifications". But the doctors discuss their number and wonder whether it is legitimate to include confession and repentance among them. They seem inclined to attach the parihara, not to the first five prayascittas on the theoretical list, but to various restrictions on food arranged in ascending order of severity.
213:
In spite of the dryness and the length of the exegesis, a study of the atonements allows one to form an idea of the effort made by the Jainas to organise their religious life dynamically, starting from practices certainly ordinary enough at the time of Mahavira, which reappear (but in different forms) in other communities in India. The most commonlypractised observances seem to have been those of the solitary life, fasting, abstinence and restrictions of all sorts, the vow of silence, psycho-somatic exercises, study, total submission to the spritual teacher.
Combined in various ways they make up the parihara, which seems to have been for the earliest Jaina cenobites the atonement par excellence, by virtue of which the parihariya, while remaining within the community, did his best to imitate the ideal of the religious life as it has been led by the twenty-fourth Tirthamkara.
The study of the prayaścittas also allows one to get a truer picture of the monks' personalities, and of their virtues and failings. It throws into relief the humanity of the teachers, their devotion to their cause and to their brethern, their anxiety to make rational use of the practices to p. 214 which other religious seem to have abondoned themselves with less judgment. Without, like the Buddhists, going so far as to delineate a 'middle. way' towards Deliverance, they are conscious that each observance has its limits and that it is necessary to counterbalance the excesses of each observance by encouraging the opposite,
To allow the majority of people to reach salvation, it was necessary to watch over and guide the faithful. Community life facilitates this
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