Harmless Soul

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

Page 52

38 Harmless Souls which ensures that one remains bound in samsāra. The beginnings of this internalisation were probably subject to Buddhist influence. For parigraha as 'possessiveness' is very like taṇhā ('thirst', 'craving', or 'grasping'), which for early Buddhism is the karmically significant (i.e. binding) factor. 102 In the Buddhist case, of course, karma is fully internalised to volition; for the Jains it is still ultimately a matter of physical action. Nevertheless, we can see here the beginnings of what later becomes a crucial doctrine for the Jaina lay person. It is only with Umāsvāti, however, as will be made clear, that a technical explanation in terms of the mechanism of bondage is given for the widely held perception that passion is somehow very closely linked to violence and so to continuing bondage.
1.7 Activity and karma before Umāsvāti
i) The meaning of ārambha Monier-Williams gives vrabh / rambh as an early form of the root labh / lambh. A vrabh has the basic meaning of 'to set about', 'begin', 'undertake', whereas, although ā vlabh can also have the meaning 'to commence', it also has the sense of taking hold of (in a physical sense)', and 'to kill', especially 'to sacrifice'.103 In eastern Middle Indo-Aryan dialects rabh and labh fall together (r > 1). Thus there is an ambiguity in Prākrit and Pāli, and for both Jains and Buddhists there is a tendency for the word to mean 'killing'. For the Jains, however, there may have been a doctrinal as well as a linguistic reason for this ambiguity. Ārambha originally meant 'undertaking' / 'beginning', but, given the fact that jīvas were believed to be almost everywhere (vide the sixfold objects of ārambha),104 for the earliest Jaina ascetics virtually any activity was probably perceived as
102 On tanhā, see Rahula pp. 29-34, and Buddhist Dictionary, pp. 218-219.
103 Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. 104 See p. 6, above.