Jain Journal 1974 01

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

Page 50

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JAIN JOURNAL
in Gujarat in the West. According to tradition, Rsabha, the first of the Tirthankaras, visited, among other countries, Konkan, and Southern Karnataka. This is why the social and economic condition of India as reflected in the early Jaina texts is likely to be more varied. Hence a study of the socio-economic data contained in these will not be mere repetitions of what is known from the Buddhist sources. However, such a study suffers from two inherent limitations. In the first place, the Jaina canonical literature primarily refers to the Svetamvara scriptures since the position of the texts of the Digamvara sect still remains to be determined. This literature was composed and compiled in different parts of the country at different times and by different persons. Hence without a rigid stratification according to chronology and region of composition by means of comparative and critical method, there will always be the possibility of projecting a condition prevalent at a later date as valid for an earlier epoch. It is indeed not unlikely that some institution prevalent in Western India in the fifth century A.D. may be interpreted as true of Magadha in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. In the second place, there is no systematic discussion in these texts of social and economic organisation or condition of India. What information regarding these can be had is from casual references many of which are unique of their kind with the result that our knowledge of the socio-economic life from these texts will necessarily be incomplete and any deduction from these will be, to say the least, hypothetical.
As for social organisation, the institution of caste is nowhere denied in the Jaina texts. On the other hand, the Sūtrakstānga clearly mentions it as the very first of the eight objects of pride. The Āvašyaka Sutra equally enjoins that a real monk should not take pride in caste distinction. However, the order of precedence in the social hierarchy of the Jainas did not correspond with that of the castes. Such is at least the picture we get from the Praśna-Vyakarasa which mentions the transgressors of the vow of brahmacarya in the following order : kings, overlords, chaplains, high officers of the state. The same text has a more detailed enumeration with regard to the violation of the fifth vow of aparigraha : emperors, Vasudevas, Mandalikas, chieftains, Talavaras, commandersin-chief, millionaires, bankers, Rastrikas, Purohitas and the like. In neither case the usual caste names are to be found. It is likely that people mentioned in these two lists were the wielders of power whereas the caste distinction was indicative of prestige only. This might have been the case in the early centuries of the Christian era when viewed from the use of terms of Talavaras, Mandalikas, Rastrikas, etc., the Prašna-Vyakarana was compiled. Dr. Chakravarti maintained that “the Sudras as a caste existed only in theory”. Even then like the term