Food And Freedom

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas

Page 18

178
Paul Dundas
kevalin, it is clear that Prabhācandra (11th century) can be regarded as the main respondent to Abhayadeva, sākatyana and Sīlārika both because of his chronological posteriority to these writers and because, in the seventeenth century, the great Svetāmbara, Yaśovijaya, specifically identifies Prabhācandra and his Nyāyakumudacandra ('The Lotus-moon of Logic'; = NKC) with the general Digambara position. 134 The NKC is a lengthy commentary on Akalarika's Laghīyastraya and effectively summarises the Digambara attitude to key ontological issues. Before giving an account of Prabhācandra's response, it is interesting to consider two possible objections to the Śvetāmbaras made by other Digambaras but not utilised by Prabhācandra. The first objection is specifically Digambara since it derives from the writings of Kundakunda and, in particular, his Samayasāra. Kundakunda is noteworthy for having evolved an approach to the description of reality very close to the notion of two levels of truth which is much better known in the context of Mādhyamika Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta. According to Kundakunda, there are two possible standpoints (naya) from which judgements can be made about the soul: the standpoint of determination (niscaya) and the standpoint of everyday reality (vyavahāra). The former is concerned with the soul as ultimate reality whereas the latter is concerned with the soul's ostensible contact with that which, in reality, does not pertain to it.135 So Devasena (tenth century) in his Bhāvasamgraha 36 (verse 113) says that, while the kevalin metaphorically (uvaāreņa, i.e. on the level of vyavahāra, ordinary reality) might be said to be subject to the process of āhāra whereby karmic or non-karmic matter (including food) is taken into the body, on the level of true reality (nicchaeņa), he is not subject to it because he is free from passion and wholly 'other'.
The second possible objection to the Svetāmbaras is more obvious given Jainism's strongly sympathetic attitude towards all forms of life in the world. Since even plants have souls and are composed of conglomerations of life forms (nigoda), Vāmadeva (fourteenth century) points out that for the kevalin to take alms, even in vegetarian form, must involve 'intention to harm (himsā) for somebody. 137 Even though monastic law, which deals with giving and receiving alms, makes clear that the monk's attitude to the preparation of food is neutral, it might still seem highly improbable that the kevalin should be implicated in any way in the destruction of life. That Prabhācandra uses neither of these arguments of Devasena and Vāmadeva presumably suggests that he felt able to confute the Svetāmbaras by showing the obvious inconsistences of the points they themselves made.
Prabhācandra starts by trying to establish exactly what is meant by the term ‘nourishment' (āhāra). The traditional Digambara analysis of this is both more elaborate than the Svetāmbara version and also has different nomenclature: the solid food which the Svetāmbara call 'deposit nourishment'