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Sutrakrtanga 11-A Historical Evaluation
35
for a householder to desist also from causing injury to the static type of living beings. The details of the opponent's argument and the Jaina's coun. ter-argument need not detain us but the noteworthy thing is that in the course of argumentation there are here incidentally mentioned three increasing mild grades of a pious householder's performance-viz.
(1) that which includes the observance of the regular monthly fast called pauşadha, the desistence from the five basic vices (violence, falsehood etc.) in their gross form, the reduction of one's life-requirements, the fasting unto death (p.410);
(ii) that which includes only the fasting unto death (p.411):
(iii) that wbich includes the performance of the daily short service called samāyika, and the desistence from causing injury to the living beings resid. ing within a voluntarily fixed geographical limit (p.417).
Also noteworthy is the circumstance that all the items occurring here somehow make their appearance in the classical Jaina concept of the twelve
ies of a pious householder with fasting unto death as the thirteenth.]
The one context in which a pious householder's performance receives attention occurs in chapter II dealing with 13 kriyas - of which twelve are evil acts of various sorts while the thirteenth is the ideal life-activity of a monk. Instances of the twelve evil acts are mostly drawn from a householder's life-routine but that is nothing new; for the tradition of doing so was as old as Acārānga T, Sutrakrtänga I etc. Noteworthy is a long discu
ch occurs when all the 13 krivās have been described and wbich twice develops three interrelated concepts, -viz. "life of utter impioushood', life of full pioushood', life of intermediate pioushood,' (pp. 294 etc.; pp. 309 etc.). Here in the second treatment the instance of the life of intermediate pioushood' is yielded by a pious householder's life-routine (p.325). In this context emphasis is laid on (i) a pious householder having firm faith in the Jaina scripture, (ii) his liberal offering of gifts to the monks. (iii) his adopting various restraints and observing the pauşadha-fast, (iv) his fasting unto death. [Here there also occurs in the second place an item speaking of just the pausa lha-fasts in the manner of those passages from chapter VII. It was this item which was enlarged to yield the present item (ii) and the occurrence of both in our passage is anomalous. One of them must be an interpolation.]
These incidental references to pious householder's performance are in striking contrast to the practice of the oldest Jaina texts where such a performance was hardly ever spoken of; (even in his capacity as the donor
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