Food And Freedom

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas

Page 23

Food and Freedom
183
doing this, yet confession is for those who have committed faults, a category in which the tirthankara cannot be included. 157
In a final burst of sarcasm, Prabhācandra asks how the tīrthankara could become invisible to even his closest disciples at the time of eating since his body continually blazes forth with light. If he is concealed by some kind of screen then it would be difficult to give alms to him at all, and if his invisibility comes about through some kind of magic spell, then he is a wizard (vidyādhara) and not an ascetic. The Digambara position, in short, is that the kevalin's position is one of infinite bliss, and hunger is at odds with this. 158
Although other Jaina writers engaged in debate about the kevalin, it was Abhayadeva, sākatāyana, Sīlārika and Prabhācandra who established the main terms of reference of the controversy. We have already seen that Vādidevasuri employed traditional Svetāmbara arguments in his disputation with the Digambara Kumudacandra and an examination of his Syādvādaratnākara159 highlights this, for in this work which is, somewhat ironically, indebted to Prabhācandra, 160 he merely reiterates the points made by his distinguished predecessors, often scarcely deviating from their actual language, and adds nothing new to the Svetāmbara approach to the kevalin. Digambara writers such as Jayasena (12th century), the commentator on Kundakunda's Pravacanasāra, and Vāmadeva (14th century) echo the arguments and spirit of Akalarika and Prabhācandra.
The last noteworthy writer to participate in the debate was the Svetāmbara, Yaśovijaya, one of the most illustrious members of the Tapā Gaccha. 161 Although he is usually depicted as a reformer and standardiser of Jaina practice, his Ādhyātmikamatakhandana 162 ('The Destruction of Digambara Doctrine') is, as its title suggests, neither sirenic nor conciliatory towards his opponents. In this often fiercely polemical work, in which Prabhācandra is singled out for specific abuse, Yasovijaya deploys a broad range of reference to Jaina literature and also utilises a highly sophisticated logical technique to reinforce the standard Svetāmbara position and to attack some aspects of the Digambara argument not dealt with by the earlier writers. He is particularly scathing towards the idea that the kevalin might possess a special kind of body, a paramaudārika body, which lacks the fundamental physical constituents (dhātu). It is nonsensical, Yaśovijaya asserts, to maintain that a body with such a tough physical structure as the kevalin's should not have the fundamental constituents, for the very idea of an audārika body of any sort would be undermined if it did not have bones, sinews and so on. If it were to be denied that the kevalin has blood, then belief in his miraculous attributes (atiśaya), valid by and large for both sects, would have to be abandoned, for it is supposedly one of the main characteristics of the kevalin that his blood is as white as milk. Alternatively, if the Digambaras were to argue that the fundamental constituents gradually disappear as the individual progresses