Harmless Soul

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

Page 19

Early Jainism 5 however, is clearly not possible. It is not even known when the Śvetāmbaras first began to write down their canon. P.S. Jaini suggests some time prior to the second council at Mathura in the fourth century CE. But the final redaction was not made and committed to writing until the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century.5
Later canonical texts raise similar problems of chronology, which I shall not consider here. However, further research into these works may well help to lay bare the process of doctrinal change which occurs between the Āyāramga Sutta and Umāsvāti. For my present purposes it is sufficient to show that such a change has taken place, and the longer the period to have elapsed between the canonical material and the Tattvärtha Sutra the more clearly that change is delineated. For that reason I have chosen here to compare the teachings of the Tattvärtha Sūtra with those in what are generally acknowledged to be the earliest extant canonical texts.
1.2 The force of activity (yoga) in bondage: action and intention
K.K. Dixit, characterising Āyāramga 1 and Suyagadamga 1, which are generally admitted to be the earliest surviving Jaina texts, says that they put an unconditional emphasis on world-renunciation, extol the life of the monk, and have 'nothing but condemnation for the life of the householder'.6 Under such conditions it is difficult, if not impossible, for any community of monks 'to forge special links with any community of householders'. The ascetic's life, which is so hard to follow, is designed to reduce monks to a minimum of dependence upon lay society. The texts connect parigraha (attachment to worldly things / 'possession') with arambha ('violence') and treat them as
5
See JPP
6 Dixit 1978, p. 4.
7
Ibid. p. 5.
pp. 51-52; Doshi pp. 26-27.