Harmless Soul

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

Page 57

Early Jainism 43 On occasion, living beings are destroyed by contact with the body of a virtuous monk walking in the prescribed fashion; he will get his punishment in this life. But if it was done contrary to the rules, he should repent of it and do penance for it. Thus he who knows the sacred texts recommends penance combined with carefulness. 118
Again, this is not the same thing as saying that monks are allowed to commit what might be normally understood as 'accidental' injury. The reference is to unavoidable injury done in highly controlled circumstances; this still has karmic consequences, but of a short-term, and thus manageable nature. Although it may be noted that the consequences envisaged in this early text are apparently more serious and longer-lasting than the almost instantaneous entry and exit of karma portrayed in the Viyāhapannatti (see above). 119
The invention of categories of action and karmic 'bondage' which have negligible consequences in effect makes both action and the inflow of karma neutral in themselves. The development of this is perhaps traceable from a passage in the second book of the Sūyagadamga. There, at Sūyagadamga. 2.2.1, thirteen kinds of activity
118 Jacobi's trans. 1884, p. 48, with alterations of:
egayā guṇasamiyassa rīyao kāyasamphāsam (sam)aņucinnā egaiyā pāņā uddāyanti, iha logaveyaņavejjāvadiyam, jam āuttikayam tam pariņņāya vivegam ei, evam se appamāenam vivegam kittai puvvavi* - Āy. 1.5.4.3 (Suttāgame 307). *Schubring's ed. prints veyavi, Suttagame puννανί.
119 Note also Das. 5.1:87-89, where a monk who has collected alms and returned with them to where his guru is, should approach the latter with 'the airyāpathiki formula'. This is Schubring's understanding of iriyāvahiya at Das 5.1:88 (his trans., p. 93, Leumann's ed.). The formula referred to here is probably the third of the āvassava / avasvaka formulae, vandanaga, which is the prescribed way of respectfully addressing a superior upon entering a place (see Schubring 1962, p. 269). Here it is clearly connected with returning from the begging round, i.e. returning from a permitted monastic activity (iryāvahiya). On the 'ritualisation' of monastic discipline, see below.