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Early Jainism
4. The Inanimate and Animate objects of Parigraha
The concept of parigraha was further clarified by maintaining that an object of one's parigraha might be either inanimate or animate. Broadly speaking, the material goods of all sorts are the possible inanimate objects of one's parigraha, the social relatives of all sorts are the possible animate objects of one's parigraha. The two are not unconnected, for it is in the interests of ones social relatives-just as in the interests of oneself--that one seeks to accumulate material goods. That all accumulation of material goods necessarily involves sinful acts goes without saying for otherwise there should not be much point in condemning such accumulation. And then it was emphasized that one accumulating material goods in the interests of one's social relatives is in a particular unfortunate position, for the worldly benefits to be derived out of those goods are enjoyed by the relatives in question while the other-worldy cvil fruits of the sin incurred by one in this connection are reaped by oneself.
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Jain Education International
5. The sixfold objects of Arambha
That the possible object of arambha is a being belonging to one of the six types is a most noteworthy teaching of our texts; and what these six being-types are is no less noteworthy. Thus we are told that the ordinary world of insects, birds, animals and human beings is a world of just one type of living beings technically called trasa or 'mobile'; the other five types of living beings-collectively called 'sthavara' or 'static'-are bits of earth, bits of water, bits of fire, bits of air and individual plants. This particular understanding of what constitutes the world of living beings must have accentuated the already strong ascetic tendency of the Jajna specula. tion, For otherwise, a Jaina could have argued that in case one undertakes such worldly productive activity as involves no employment of human or animal labour but just the manipulation of things like earth, water, fire and air one is indulging in nothing sinful, but as things stood he was bound to condemn even an activity like this as one which involves a lot of arambha-directed against the allegedly living beings like earth, water, fire and air. Even so, nothing prevented a Jaina from characterizing as particularly sinful the acts which involve an employment of human or animal labour. This trend of thought, however, does not appear in our texts; (it gained some sort of prominence in the later Jaina speculation when the concept of 'pious householder' was given currency and a pious householder was defined as one who abstains from all violence done to the trasa being though not from that done to the sthavara ones)
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