________________
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.74 .
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?5 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.. Schmithausen 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, 76 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 Arthaśāstra 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.
