Idea of Ahimsa and Asceticism in Ancient Indian Tradition

Author(s): Bansidhar Bhatt
Publisher: B J Institute

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AHMSA, ASCETICISM ....
these two paths result from the distinction in ritual practices. By means of ritural practice, the sacrificer is "integrated with cosmos and enters into a kind of transformation". The fear of the death is largely reduced to an abstraction (Tull. p.111). Death is a reality and an essential part of the sacrifice. --- The ritual texts believed, that the activites are generated and regenerated in a kind of cycle, e.g. smoke results ultimately in rain, the sacrificer gets a new birth in the sacrifice, he goes from this world to the next world and comes from there in this world,his death and rebirth,all these are generated and regenerated. In the upaniṣadic literature, the inner sacrificial values were enhanced. But concepts about karmas in order to fulfil a karma doctrine had their place in the Brahmanical texts. The doctrine had their place in the Brahmanical texts. The doctrinal princi-ples of the karmas operate in both the spheres almost alike. only they are merely extended from the ritural world to a still larger world of experience (Tull. p. 1220.)
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(e) Metempsychosis :
On the basis of his study of various vedic legends, such as the Bhrgu-Varuna and the like, Schmithausen observed that they contain borderline cases of metamorphosis and metempsychosis. Their underlying story describing the after-life birth shows the "zig-zag-pattern" in the early vedic, Buddhist and Jaina literature as well (Schmithausen-1 pp. 96-101). So far the BhrguVaruna legend is concerned (see above 2.a), a plausible ground behind all the three victims - a tree, an animal, a plant of this world which assumed a human form to revenge upon the men.......... in the yonder world, may be functionally motivated for wielding axes and choppers, etc. as Schmithausen thinks, but it suggests, I think, something special. The victims like trees, animals and plants are living beings and they deserve equal treatment on par with human beings in this world. Men should not treat them merely as insignificant being worth to be injured. Conversely, in the case of victims of the yonder world, the three men have retained their human form of this world which suggests also the same matter. The events of killing actually the men bring out considerable effect and the dread in the foreground, Which would have hardly been so, had the men of this world assumed invertedly the non-human formsof a tree, an animal, and a plant,-since events of killing men in their non-human forms would have again been misjudged as insignificant events as in this world. And it would have surely missed the fundamental point of the teaching by makFor Private & Personal Use Only