________________
462 THE ADYAR LIBRARY BULLETIN is this: The prohibition to damage or injure plants, etc., to be observed by the Buddhist monks and nuns, is several times accounted for by pointing out that people regard plants as living beings, and might therefore take offence at such damage, and turn away from the Buddha's teaching 24
In another and in some regard more detailed version of his article which has, however, not yet been published, Schmithausen draws on a passage of the Vinayapitaka?s according to which the monks and nuns are prohibited from wandering during the rainy season, and the reason given for this well-known restriction is quite interestingly that otherwise small animals and green plants, which latter appear in large numbers only at this time of the year, could be trampled to death. Schmit. hausen quite understandably takes this to be another piece of evidence for the early Buddhists' sharing or at least taking into account the common belief that plants, too, are living beings, 78 or perhaps still behaving according to it; and I do not at all want to contradict him, especially in view of the fact that small animals are included here. But I think it is very instructive to note--and not only with regard to the problem of interpretation with which I have struggled in the preceding pages, but also in terms of its general importance-that the Dharmaśāstra texts referred to above--and the Arthasāstra is no exception-regard the pressing down (mardana) etc. of plants in a field as also coming within the terms of damage to crops'. However, it should be repeated that what their authors are concerned about-just
CATTLE, FIELD AND BARLEY 463 like a modern European farmer who does not want strollers or holidaymakers to trespass on his green meadow (in reality nowadays rather an area of land on which grass and nothing else is cultivated)-is exclusively the material loss; this is evident even in a seemingly generous exception to the general rules like that ascribed by Nandapandita" to Sankhalikhitau according to which there is no punishment if only a mouthful (of whatever grows on the field is eaten by cattle)' (gråse tv adandah). Nevertheless, in individual cases it may be quite difficult to decide whether a statement in a text is based on such economic considerations or rather on (ultimately) ethical ones, and the absence or otherwise of expressions like (a) himsă does not by itself render much assistance in solving the problem one is then faced with.
In the present case, too, it might be still objected that the oxen like any other member of the bovine species, etc., in so far as they are by nature herbivores, can hardly avoid injuring plants- unless they feed only on dried, i.e. already dead, plants or hay.. This is not only true, but it would also be futile to search for an invalidation of this argument by assuming that what is decisive in this regard is the difference between economic plants on the one hand which yield a harvest in form of grains, etc., and those, on the other, which are themselves directly used as fodder. For, there is, if I am not mistaken, evidence in the Bh. also for the fact that as for their animateness Patañjali expectedly did not distinguish between various types of plants, or,
