Harmless Soul

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

Page 39

Early Jainism 25 other disadvantages) a worse re-birth after death. Dasaveyāliya 11.7 reads: '(To return) means going down (after death)': 60 Such a fate could hardly be construed as some kind of punishment simply because he has given up being a monk, because, since influx of karmic matter (āsrava) is tied to himsā, there is no karmic result from such a change of status in itself: rather, rebirth in hell is here portrayed as the inevitable result of leading the life of a householder.61 For, as Dixit points out, the idea that acts involving the employment of human or animal labour were particularly 'sinful' (i.e. binding) and others less so, does not appear in the earliest texts.62 That is to say, all acts which harmed any of the six types of living beings, whether trasa (mobile) or sthāvara (immobile), were considered to be equally binding. (To be clear about this, the ethical attitude is not so much that a man is as worthless as a mango or a louse, but that a mango or a louse is as important as a man, all jīvas having equal value.) Such a distinction between the binding effects of doing harm to trasa beings on the one hand, and sthāvara beings on the other, only emerged in later Jaina speculation, where the concept of the 'pious householder' is defined as 'one who abstains from all violence done to the trasa beings', that done to sthāvara ones being tolerated.63 As P.S. Jaini puts it, the vow of ahiņsā in its partial, i.e. lay, form applies
60 Schubring translates aharagai-vāsovasampayā as '(To return) means to reach a (place in hell (after death)'. Cf. Āy. 1.6.4.1: 'When they (the disciples) feel the hardships (of a religious life) they slide back, for their love of life. Their leaving the world is a bad leavingJacobi's trans. of putthā v'ege șiyattanti jīviyass' eva kāraņā. nikkhantam pi tesim dunnikkhantam bhavai.
61 Cf. Sūy. 1.3ff. on the potentially fatal temptation to return to lay life. Das. 11 also stresses the social disadvantages of being an exmonk: see, for example, 11.6. See also Olivelle 1974, p. 20, on the general revulsion felt by Indians for the parivrājaka who attempts to return to a society where there is no place left for him.
62 Dixit 1978, p. 6. 63 Dixit 1978, p. 6.