Jain Journal 1976 10

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

Page 14

Some Aspects of Socio-Economic Life from the Jaina Canonical Literature
ADHIR CHAKRAVARTI
Lord Mahavira and the Buddha hailed from more or less the same region of the country, viz., North-Eastern India and were close contemporaries. Hence the socio-economic background of Jainism and early Buddhism was the same. This fact has given rise to a tendency amongst scholars to gloss over facts gleaned from the early Jaina texts. Instead, after stating the Buddhist point of view on any aspect of society and economy, one says that the same may be said from the Jaina texts as well. It is, however, conveniently forgotten that the geographical horizen of Jainism was much wider. It comprised the Ladha country with its two sub-divisions, Suhmabhumi (Burdwan and Birbhum districts) and Vajjabhumi (possibly Midnapore district), Tomalitti (Tamralipti, modern Tamluk) in the east and Sauviradesa (Sovira of the Buddhist texts, Lower Indus Valley) in the west. 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 inherrent limitations. In the first place, the Jaina canonical literature primarily refers to the Svetamvara scriptures since the position of the text 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 of the data contained in these texts 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 West 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 our texts of the 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 is necessarily incomplete and any deduction from these will be, to