Jain Journal 1973 10

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

Page 30

OCTOBER, 1973
The Sudras were further subdivided into two sections—the washermen, barbers, etc., and the rest. The latter were further subdivided into the touchables and the untouchables. Rsabhadeva planned towns, built villages and grouped them into circles of eight hundred, four
1. and two hundred. He apportioned the earth among the four monarchs, each of whom was the lord of a thousand smaller kings under him. It was now when the political institutions of governments were thus established, Rsabhadeva founded the other institutions of punishment and imprisonment. The justification for thus creating punishment was that hitherto men had obeyed even when they had been mildly rebuked ; but now they ceased to listen even when harshly rebuked ; chastisement of a severe type was now needed to bring them round, and this could be done only by punishment.
As to how punishment came gradually to assume its full stature, we are told in the Adipurāņa that, with the increased wickedness of men, the patriarchs progressively increased their penalties for offences. Thus, the first five patriarchs and their successors had merely prescribed for offences the punishment of crying alas to which the next five patriarchs added that of warning against the repetition of the offence ; while the last four patriarchs prescribed for offenders the punishment of crying shame : while it was only Bharata, who, on realizing that men could not be weaned from crimes, instituted corporal punishment, imprisonment, and even death. Thus was the earlier Bhogabhūmi or land of enjoyment, transformed into Karmabhūmi or land of action, the age-cycles made complete, and coercive punishment, so essential in preserving order, introduced into the history of men. It was only in this way that the strong were prevented from swallowing the weak like the proverbial law of the fish19.
So that we might complete Jinasena's ideas on government, we may here briefly enumerate the obligations of the king to his subjects. Jinasena, we may be permitted to repeat, states that the rule relating to the punishment of the wicked and the cherishing of the good, had not existed in the earlier ages, since men had lived in a state of complete happiness. It was only in the absence of the wielder of the danda or punishment, that there was the fear of the larger fish devouring the smaller, as mentioned just above. It was here, while referring to the
19
Adipurana, III, XVI, 130-190, 214-216, 240-245, 255-257. See also Beni Prasad, op. cit., pp. 222-224. Professor Ghoshal would make them all fifteen when he himself states in para 1 of the same page that there were fourteen Patriarchs beginning with kuladhara, and not as a kulakara, on the same page.