Harmless Soul

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

Page 96

82 Harmless Souls important thing is physical activity, or the lack of it, in the external world: attitude is only important in so far as it leads to certain kinds of behaviour.
The doctrinal content of the earliest canonical literature is simply intended to reinforce ascetic practice. The problem for Umāsvāti is to reduce the incompatibility of a purely ascetic 'doctrine' with the householder's life, without juxtaposing them in such a way that they are seen to be openly opposed. In other words, he has to systematize, but he has to do so incompletely or imperfectly.
It is this necessary incompleteness which gives rise to much of the problematic and poorly fitting terminology in the Tattvārtha Sūtra. Two different historical layers, reflected in two different kinds of behaviour, are imperfectly systematized in the one work by a process of partial internalization, and therefore of gradation, of the path to liberation. This is most evident when Umāsvāti takes earlier 'lists', or concepts, and attempts to deposit them without change in new categories. It is not surprising, therefore, that later commentators have struggled without success to integrate then fully, and that in the process original meanings have been obscured or lost. The problematic nature of some Jaina terminology thus arises out of the need to revise earlier ideas in, and for, a more sophisticated and complex religious milieu, while retaining that canonical authority which is expressed in the ideal of ascetic practice. In other words, such terminological problems stem from the extreme asceticism of early Jaina practice and its incompatibility with lay practice: the two positions are so antithetical that they cannot both be preserved and at the same time fully incorporated within the same system.
The extent to which Umāsvāti internalizes earlier doctrine, and the effect of this process on both lay and ascetic practice, requires some further discussion. According to classical Jaina theory, it is possible for a lay person to ascend by stages to the threshold of total asceticism, and then pass through mendicancy to liberation.