Food And Freedom

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas

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Paul Dundas
through the stages of spiritual development, then this would entail the impossible situation of the body altering its basic structure as each new stage is
reached. 163
For Yaśovijaya, Śivabhūti, the putative founder of the Digambara sect, can hardly be considered a Jaina at all. The aim of the Digambaras in saying that the kevalin doesn't eat is to mislead the world and, as they are in the grip of 'deluding karma which arises from false doctrine' (mithyātvamohanīya), they are to be avoided at all costs. 164
It is somewhat startling to read such virulent denunciation of one Jaina sect by a member of another, even if it be partly rhetorical, and one must conclude that the embattled situation in which Jainism no doubt found itself in the seventeenth century, with numbers shrinking under Hindu and Moslem pressure, must have induced Yaśovijaya to resort to harsh language in an attempt to impose doctrinal unity. Unfortunately for him, this was hardly a debate which could be 'won' by either side, Vadidevasūri's victory over Kumudacandra in 1125 AD probably representing not so much the triumph of one set of doctrinal beliefs over another but more likely the confirmation of the geographical boundaries of sectarian spheres of influence, Śvetāmbara in Gujarat and Digambara in the south. A comment by the twelfth century Digambara, Jayasena, is particularly revealing in this aspect. There is, he says, no point in asserting that the kevalin eats food on the basis of observation of the behaviour of ordinary people in the world today, since there have been no kevalins since Jambū whose behaviour we could observe. We would be forced to deny the omniscience of the kevalin because we do not currently find anybody with comparable attainments and the prowess of the legendary heroes, Rāma and Rāvana, would also have to be rejected because we do not see their like today. 165 In fact, a consideration of our polemicists' statements suggests that neither of the competing viewpoints was really susceptible to disproval by logical means and that the weight of the respective traditions built up over the centuries, with their differing emphases and interpretations of aspects of the common Jaina tradition, produced two different and incontrovertible pictures of the kevalin.
As far as the debate is concerned, the Svetāmbaras seem to view the kevalin as essentially human, but a human of a highly developed type who is at the same time still subject to mortal frailties: in the words of Abhayadeva, 'There is no time until his final release when he does not have vexations (klesa)'. 166 For the Digambaras, on the other hand, he is much more than human and to all intents and purposes approaches divinity, a view expressed in Samantabhadra's BỊhatsvayambhūstotra which Prabhācandra quotes with approval: 'He (i.e. the kevalin qua tirthankara) has gone beyond mortal nature and is a divinity among divinities."167
As my purpose in this paper has been the delineation of the terms of