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JANUARY, 1969
For the rest, the book bears the stamp of painstaking research with copious footnotes added to each chapter. The author has added a valueable index on the ethical literature of the Jainas with fairly comprehensive notes. On one important point however, the reviewer finds it somewhat difficult to agree with the author when he says that Jaina ethics assigns primary place to the life of a monk and "the life of householder occupies only a secondary place". For, it has always appeared to him that Jainism, unlike perhaps any other system of religion, is unique in not only envisaging an order in which the laity is complementary to the ecclesiastic but in prescribing two parallel codes of conduct for the two. When thus complementarity is involved, there can be no occasion for inferiority. And whatever inferiority might appear at first sight due to the prescription of anuvratas for the laity, who circumstanced as they are, cannot surely follow the mahāvratas, the deficiency is adequately compensated by the prescription of the gunavratas and śikṣāvratas in the conduct of the householder which provide sufficient strength and depth to the miniature vows of aṇuvrata. A separate chapter entitled conclusion at the end is, however, out of tune with the rest of the work which strives to re-tell an ethics which has a strictly spiritual end in modern political terminology. This of course is not to deny the efficacy of some of the traditional tenets in the solution of some of the contemporary problems but that should be the politician's bother rather than that of a scholar. In one respect, however, the author could have thrown some light without trespassing into somebody else's jurisdiction if he had considered Jaina ethics as it is practised today both by the Jaina ecclesiastics and the Jaina laymen, more particularly the latter, since the Jainas are dominantly a business community and since business in modern times has become synonymous with spurious moneymaking.
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With a good print and a good-get-up, the work will be a useful addition to the literature on Jainism available in English.
Jain Education International
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K. C. L.
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