Harmless Soul

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

Page 94

80 Harmless Souls Jainism'. By 'Early Jainism', is understood that exclusively ascetic, mendicant path to liberation which appeared at approximately the same time as other heterodox systems, notably Buddhism, partly as a reaction to Brahmanical religion, but, in Jainism's case, perhaps mostly as a refinement of an even earlier, archaic asceticism.5 'Umāsvāti's Jainism', on the other hand, belongs to a much wider social world, in the sense that it is an attempt to systematize, as far as possible, Jaina doctrine for the whole Jaina community, and perhaps most of all for a growing lay audience. That is to say, Umāsvāti is attempting to reconcile the social fact of an active lay following, and the need to preserve such a following, with a body of canonical texts, the oldest and most important components of which (containing perhaps the teachings of Mahāvīra himself) were directed specifically at ascetics who had renounced the householder's world precisely because, as the doctrines expounded in those texts make clear, there was no possibility whatsoever of obtaining liberation within it.
It is also significant that Umāsvāti is writing in Sanskrit. Thus he is not writing simply for the benefit of his own community, but also in order to dispute with outsiders, proponents of rival darśanas. In other words, for Jaina practice to be preserved and defended, its doctrinal superstructure has to be defended. Moreover, since Jaina renouncers keep moving, and are unlikely to know or learn Sanskrit, the very nature of Umāsvāti's enterprise suggests that it is concerned with problems in the wider society.
The whole history of Jaina doctrinal development is one of the struggle to prevent the clearly delineated but extremely demanding requirements of the ascetic's path coming into direct conflict with the life led by the Jaina layperson, when the practice of both ascetic and laity is recoded in doctrinal terms. It is precisely this conflict and the need to avoid it which leads, on the one hand, to the
*See Basham for some discussion of 'Jainism' before Mahāvira; also R. Williams 1966, pp. 2-6.