Jain Journal 1970 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 46

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JAIN JOURNAL
The royal couple also finally renounce. Thus so many renunciations have here been woven into a dramatic texture. The situation in chapter 19 also is somewhat similar. Mrgaputra who has decided to renounce counterbalances the temptations of worldly pleasures offered by his father with a vivid description of the dire sufferings in the hell.
What however brings Uttarājjhayaṇa nearest a work of art is the wealth of imagination shown in the aptitude, variety and suggestiveness of the similes, metaphors and illustrations used.
In the first chapter a bad pupil has been compared with a bitch with sore ears who is driven from everywhere and a pig who by virtue of his inborn nature shuns a trough filled with grain and delights in feeding upon faeces. It is significant that the bitch is rotten at the ears. So the In those days pupils received knowledge primarily with ears. rotten ears of the bitch suggest that there is something wrong with the receptive faculty of the pupil, he would not smoothly receive knowledge. May be he has already had some heretical doctrines and he so tenaciously adheres to these that he is not ready to accept new ideas.1 Under such circumstances it is natural that he is driven away from the society of people with right knowledge. Consequently he is deprived of knowing and practising right conduct apparently by the external agencies. Again there is a great enemy within him. His own evil nature would not let him practise virtue. Thus for him to continue in the quagmire of evil ways there are causes within and causes without. The two similes of the bitch and the pig make the picture complete. They are supplements to each other-the one suggesting the impediment without while the other suggesting the impediment within.
In chapter 8 those attached to the objects of senses have been compared with a fly caught in phlegm. The simile of phlegm is suggestive of the abominable nature of worldly attachment. The endless nature of desires is well expressed in the phrase "iccha hu āgāsasamā aṇamtiyā”. Desires are like spears, poison of venomous snakes :
sallam kāmā visam kāmā kāmā āsīvisovamā 9/53
The series of metaphors for a learned ascetic in chapter 11 shows an exuberant creative energy. A learned ascetic is a Kamboja horse, He is a valiant hero, an irresistible elephant, a lion with sharp fangs.
1 Sant Tulsidas, the famous poet of the Ramacaritamanasa means lack of recepti vity on the part of the pupil and that of right perception on the part of the preceptor when he says:
guru sisa andha badhira ka lekha eka na sunahi eka nahi dekha.