History of Jaina Monachism

Author(s): S B Deo
Publisher: Deccan College Research Institute

Page 60

HISTORY OF JAINA MONACHISM
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DUTT, after making a survey of monastic tendencies right from the Vedic to the Upanishadic period comes to practically the same conclusion. He says, "the impact of Aryan thoughts, ideas, speculations of philosophy, on the imperfectly Aryanised communities, without the characteristic Aryan institutions, seems to me to have given birth to Buddhism itself (if an approximate chronology were needed) to a class of men answering to the Brāhmaṇas in Aryan society, who went about in a missionary spirit, dealing in philosophic speculations, teaching the uninstructed, and gaining honour and reputation wherever they went.... This seems to me the true origin of the śramaņas. ... They occupy a more distinguished place in the literature that originated in the East-in the Buddhist Pitakas and Jain Angas. 'It is in the East', says an ancient Buddhist tradition, that the Buddhas are born'”.53
DUTT bases his argument on the following observations :
(a) It is very difficult to know the exact attributes of the "muni” who is described as one girdled with wind and wearing garments soiled with yellow hue, as given in the Ķig Veda (X, 136).
(b) The "muni” of the Aitareya Brāhmana (VI, 33) is taken to be an insane man by his sons when the former is reciting some mantras.
On this point DUTT remarks, "If Aitasa is the type of the æg Vedic Muni, he is surely not the homeless Sannyāsi, yati or paribbājaka". The ‘muni' of the Upanishads "approaches more and more to the latter type till he is identified with the Paribbājaka".
(c) The Vrātya of Atharvaveda also does not resemble the paribbājaka.
On account of these reasons, he comes to the conclusion that "the Vedic hymns, therefore, which may be said to constitute the earliest and purest Aryan elements in Indian culture, do not mention clearly the condition of religious mendicancy”.54
(d) Moreover, the theory of the four-fold āśramas also was not fully developed and rigorously executed in the period of the early Upanishads. Apart from this, the whole trend of Brāhmanical literature, with the exception of some of the later Upanishads, did not favour religious mendicancy.
53. Op. cit., p. 67; See pp. 53 ff.
54. Op. cit., p. 58; 'Asceticism was at a discount in the Vedic age'--ALTEKAR, Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, p. 414.