Jain Journal 1973 10

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

Page 33

JAIN JOURNAL
precisely such eras of innocent bliss and pristine glory. It was from such ages of simplicity and original happiness that the patriarchs had led men into society and progress, leading to their gradual advancement in the economic and political fields. This, therefore, was the primary function of government, viz., to lead and guide men in the widest sense of the term in all spheres of human endeavours. Rsabha guided men to virtue precisely in this manner, as is related in the Adipurāna32
Therefore, we now come to another point of difference in the Hindu and Jaina concepts ; the Hindu concept of government was one of protection ; that of the Jainas was of mere guidance. Since the Hindu ruler's most essential function was to protect the subjects, it necessarily meant that there was a sort of an understanding between the rulers and the subjects that taxes were to be given to the State only on the extent that it gave them protection. This idea is missing in the Jaina theory as enunciated by Jinasena, in which the relationship between the patriarchs and men is one of pre-eminence on the part of the former, and the need for guidance on the part of the latter. That Jinasena's concept of protection and taxation was more idealistic than practical ; and that, therefore, it was not accepted by other Jaina theorists like Somadeva Suri will be evident when we shall describe in some detail the concept of government as given in the latter's Nītivākyāmặta below.
Even Jinasena could not escape the necessary relationship between ruler and the ruled, as is clear from the fact that, according to him, the informal relationship of pre-eminence, on the one hand, and the need for guidance, on the other, gradually came to be converted into that of the rulers and the ruled. The Jaina theory of the origin of society, caste and government is completed when, after Rsabhadeva, the last of the Kulakaras and the first of the Tirthankaras, his son Bharata assumed the status and powers of a world-conqueror and of the founder of families. The individualistic outlook of the Jainas is evident when we note that Emperor Bharata selected a number of persons from the three castes, grouped them into a fourth caste, and called it Brāhamana. In this way did the early Jaina leaders create the fourth caste in order to meet the exigencies of life. In doing so, they could not free themselves from the concept of the four-fold division of society of the ancient Hindus. But how they transformed the old concept was to make the first caste among the Hindus, namely, the Brāhmanas, inferior to the rest of the three castes. That Jinasena laboured under the earlier idea of the Hindus,
32 Adipurana, XVI. 271-275.