Concept of Pancasila in Indian Thaought

Author(s): Kamla Jain
Publisher: P V Research Institute Varanasi

Page 70

Non-Violence
evanescent; they are compared to a line drawn in water which disappears at the very moment. This is the stage when the individual adopts the complete vows of the monk. But since the passions are still there, they obstruct the attainment of liberation; these four stages are the abridged form of the fourteen stages of spiritual development (guṇasthānas).
This classification which divides ahimsa into four hundred and thirty two types is an improvement upon the Pātañjala Yoga system because it also takes into account the first three stages of samrambha, samārambha and ārambha-the gradual process of starting an act of violence. However, as far as motives and intensity etc. are concerned the classification is comprehensive enough even in Pātañjala system.
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This extensive classification pertains to the subjective aspect of an act of violence, i. e. from the point of view of the doer of an act of violence. It is not concerned with the object (i. e. one upon whom violence is inflicted or in other words one who is killed). In this field too, Jaina thinkers have gone reasonably deep. Another classification of violence which pertains to the object is also made in Jaina texts. Here violence is divided into one and eighty varieties.1 It is pointed out that the living beings are of nine types, namely air, water, fire, earth and vegetables, two sensed, threesensed, four-sensed, and five-sensed living beings, killing of any one of these is an act of violence. Up to this point this classification refers to the object involved in an act of violence. However, the classification does not confine itself to the object only, it also throws light on the subject when in the next steps of the classification it makes a reference to the killing of any of these nine types of living beings through the three instruments of mind, speech and body, and in the three ways, i. e. either killing them oneself or by asking another one to kill or by appreciating and approving someone else who has
Dharmasamgrah, 2.25.