Historical Facts About Jainism

Author(s): Lala Lajpatrai
Publisher: Jain Associations of India Mumbai

Page 86

(ii) The doctor went on to say that he had found traces of Jain influence in Buddhism. As pointed out before, Buddha gave up the system, of pliosophy which he had first adopted, and started an entirely new one. The consequence thereof was that he had also to give up the technical terms, the Paribhasha, in the former system, and in their stead had to adopt other technical terins in order to expound his new ideas, But.as he was chietly concerned with what leads to salvation, he did not work out a new and selfconsistent system of psychology as the basis of ethics. He seems to have largely adopted current ideas on this head and together with them current terins to express them. Hence there is something vague in ill-defined in Buddhist psychology. We meet with many terms which are used alike by Jains and Buddhists. Among theui there is one wlich in my opinion the Buddhists must have borrowed froin the Jains. The term Asrava, in Pali «sava, is according to the Buddhists synonyinous with klesa, and it means lumau passion, sin, corruption, cepravity. Usually tliree asavas are recognised. Kamusava the lust of tlesh, bhavusuwa the love of existence, and avijjasuva the defilement of ignorance ; occasionally a fourth asava is admitted ditthusava the defilement of heresy (see Childers, Pali dictionary S. V. asava).
Asrava etymologically means "Howing in" or "influx", and it was difficult to imagine why