ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 03

Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies

Page 50

One of the sub-sects of Jainas has even gone to the extent of describing the act of saving the life of a man or animal in distress, as violence. There could not have been a greater travesty or distortion. The problem gets further compounded when such scholars try to project such views as a part of the Jaina religion. Such views, when picked up by scholars, particularly the western ones, lead to their wrong presentation of Jainism. One such example is the book - Heart of Jainism - by Stevenson, who, perhaps getting such erroneous views concluded that Jainism had no heart at all.
When such scholars or ācāryas are asked to provide the canonical or original references in support of their unusual stony views, either refer to some texts of much later times or conveniently just parry such questions. Both for the sake of purity of thought and practicability such views need to be questioned and corrected to present an authentic picture of Ahimsă in Jainism.
Ācārānga Sūtra, a Svetāmbara canon comprising the first discourse of Mahāvīra, the 24th and the last Tirthamkara of the Jains, delivered about 2550 years ago, defines Ahimsa thus:
"The saint with true vision conceives compassion for all the world, in east and west and south and north, and so, knowing the scared lore, he will preach and spread and proclaim it, among those who strive and those who do not, in fact among all those who are willing to hear him...He should do no injury to himself or anyone else... The great sage becomes a refuge for injured creatures like an island which the can not overwhelm."
In another verse Acārānga Sūtra spells out Ahimsā as:
"Thus say all the perfect souls and blessed ones, weather past, present or to come- thus hey speak, thus they declare, thus they proclaim: All things breathing, all things existing, all things living, all beings whatever, should not be slain or treated with violence, or insulted, or tortured, or driven away. This is the pure unchanging eternal low, which the wise ones who know the world have proclaimed, among the earnest and the non-earnest, among the loyal and the non-loyal, among those who have given up punishing others and those who have not done so, among those who are weak and those who are not, among those who delight in
1. Tirthamkara Mahāvīra Aura Unakä Sarvodya Tirtha" - by Hukam Chand Bharill of Todarmal Smarak, p. 191. - Ācārānga Sutra, 1.6.5
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