Harmless Soul

Author(s): W J Johnson, Dayanand Bhargav
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 16

2 Harmless Souls
But Jainism did develop as a religion, as opposed to a personal soteriology - a religion which acquired lay followers and then (numerically, at least) came to be dominated by them. Therefore, it is my purpose in the first part of this work to consider the manner in which this religion developed, and I shall do so by examining both the ways in which the needs and circumstances of the laity were reconciled (in so far as they were) with early, purely ascetic doctrines, and the further problems to which such an enterprise inevitably gave rise.
The first textual synthesis of Jaina doctrine, Umāsvāti's Tattvārtha Sūtra, attempts just such a reconciliation of ascetic and lay concerns. It does so, as we shall see, through a mixture of doctrinal reformulation, doctrinal rejuxtaposition, and doctrinal expansion. Crucial to the new synthesis is the postulation and development of a proper (i.e. technical) doctrine of the mechanism of bondage. That is to say, the way in which karmic matter is attracted and bound to the soul is precisely delineated for the first time. This, however, gives rise to some internal contradictions: the new doctrine is apparently incompatible with certain aspects of canonical teaching. But it is precisely through the examination of these contradictions that it becomes possible to infer what is significantly new about the Tattvārtha Sūtra's mechanism of bondage. (For the content of that canonical teaching, and the ascetic practices which are founded on it, I shall refer to the earliest parts of the Svetāmbara canon, contrasting the doctrines found there with their reformulation and transformation in the Tattvārtha Sūtra.)
In short, by examining the question of what is perceived to be the immediate cause of bondage, and considering how the answer changes throughout Jainism's early history, it is possible to chart the way in which the religion grew beyond the extreme asceticism of its roots and delineate some of the incompletely resolved tensions to which that growth gave rise. The ways in which apparently insuperable theoretical contradictions are overcome, or evaded, in the