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Non-Stealing
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rooted in non-violence, love and sympathy); it is therefore not only negative but positive as well. In the Jaina and the Buddhist systems the precept is given recognition only because it is supplementary to the vow of non-violence.
Development of non-stealing as a virtue having its root in non-violence can be traced out from the age of the Rgveda, the Brāhmaṇas, the Upanişads, etc., down to the age of Buddhism and Jainism.
Stealing in the Ķgveda is regarded as a grave offence, yet it was one of the commonest crimes in the Rgvedic age. “Among the crimes the commonest appears to have been robbery which generally took the form of cattle lifting mostly practised at night. Thieves and robbers are often mentioned, and the Rgveda contains many prayers for protection at home, abroad, and on journeys."1 ".... the punishment of the thief seems to have rested with the person wronged. There are clear allusions to binding the thief in stocks, presumably with a view to induce his relatives to pay back to the aggrieved man the loss he has sustained. In one passage of the Rgveda there is a probable reference to the employment of trained men to recover the stolen cattle. Just as the khojis of modern Punjab down to modern times were expert at this difficult employment. Of death as a punishment for theft, as in later times and other primitive societies, curiously enough nothing appears in Rgveda."2
The term 'taskara's is also found in the Rgveda which means a thief or a robber, who usually used to hide himself in big forests to find big merchants etc. as his prey. Another term called 'paripanthin' similar to 'taskara’ also occurs in 1. History of Sanskrit Literature-A. A. Macdonell,
p. 163. 2. Cambridge History of India, vol. I, pp. 86, 87. 3. Vedic Index-Macdonel and Keith, vol. I.
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