Jain Journal 1977 10

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

Page 29

OCTOBER, 1977
to pollute the atmosphere itself. The climate of the world changes as a result of what the Industrial Revolution has done to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Some scientists believe that the irreversible accumulation of lead in the air we breathe will soon become a problem everywhere...... Even noise pollutes the city
On the other hand Jainism pays extreme reverence to the principle of life. As is well known, ahimsā is more thoroughly a part of Jainism than it is of either Hinduism or Buddhism. The extreme concern with not taking life, on account of the ensoulment of the universe implies that even for a Jain layman the
means of livelihood are circumscribed. Thus he should not be a farmer, for ploughing the earth involves much injury to animal life... Even most crafts involve injury to living beings for, as we have seen, the metal on the anvil of the blacksmith suffers excruciating tortures. Thus the safest profession for the Jain is trade, and from the earliest days the faith of Jainism has recruited most of its members from the trading communities of India5.
At the same time it must be recognised that excessive reverence of life, or abhorrence of certain kinds of work etc. could at one level, serve as values which, even if laudable in themselves, retard the economic progress of society or at least so it can be argued.
IV
In the modern world it is obvious that the extremes of both the subordinative and the coordinative ecological models will spell disaster. Each must be envisaged as a check on the other and both the models need to be held in tension and balance. But perhaps one can be more precise. It is one of the standard observations in economic history that the ratio of the primary sector (represented mainly by agriculture) and the secondary sector (represented mainly by industry) declines in
4 Paul A. Samuelson, Economics (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1973)
p. 816. 5 A. L. Basham, op. cit., p. 264. 6 See K. W. Kapp, Hindu Culture, Economic Development and Economic Planning
in India (New Delhi : Asia Publishing House, 1963) ; Gunnar Myrdal, The Asian Drama (New York : The Twentieth Century Fund, 1968) etc.