Jain Journal 1974 01

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

Page 30

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JAIN JOURNAL
to some extent but could not help following the earlier Hindu writers on polity in certain other important matters. In this account of the origin of society and the political order, Hemacandracarya treads in the foot-steps of Jinasenacarya. The Adisvaracaritra, for instance, is more of the pattern of the Adipurāņa inasmuch as it introduces the reader to the twelve spoked wheel of Time with its two great cycles called avasarpiņī and utsarpinī. The avasarpiņī cycle had six ages in a decending order, namely, pure Bliss, Bliss-Sorrow, Sorrow-Bliss, Sorrow, and pure Sorrow. The utsarpiņī cycle had the same spokes but in a reverse order. The succession of the six ages in the avasarpiņī cycle was attended with a gradual decline in the longevity and health of men, in their food, and even in the kalpaběkşas or wish-giving trees. It was in the third age of the avasarpiņī cycle that the hero Bimalavahana and his wife (both twins) were born in the southern part of the Bharatavarsa in the Jambudvipa, in the region between the Ganges and the Sindhu. Bimalavahana was the progenitor of a line of chiefs. When in the course of time, the wish-giving trees diminished in potency, one of the twins
rn in the manner of their progenitors, wished to acquire a kalpabrkșa at which the other afflicted twins made Bimalavahana their king with ruling powers. Then the latter divided the wish-giving trees among his followers, thereby originating the Institution of Property. He then instituted the penalty of 'hakār' for punishing any one who crossed the boundry of a wish-giving tree with a view to securing the tree of another. Gradually with the further decline in morality, the fourth descendant from Bimalavahana instituted the penalty of 'makār'; the sixth introduced the penalty of 'dhikkār'. In the days of the seventh patriarch called Nabhi, they made, at his advice, Rsabha their monarch, who introduced the institution of punishment in its civil and criminal aspects.73
Notwithstanding the above approach to the origin of society and of the political order in the manner of Jinasena, Hemacandracarya, we may note, was never carried away by mere idealism. It was not that he discarded the theory of Jinasena. On the other hand, we see the influence of the Adipurana in the Laghu-Arhanniti. But Hemacandracarya was, on the whole, a more practical teacher than Jinasena. Indeed, it will be shown below that no Jaina thinker wielded such a powerful and perhaps everlasting influence on the contemporary government as Hemacandracarya did on that of Kumarapaladeva in the twelfth century.
73 Hemacandra, Trisastisalakapurusa Caritra, Bk. I, Adisvara Caritra, pp. 93-99,
148-155 (Trans, into English by Dr. Helen M. Johnson, Baroda, G.O.S., 1931). Text published earlier in Bhavnagar, 1906. See also Ghoshal, op. cit., pp. 459-460.