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Stories Express The Soul
STEPS TO LIBERATION, JAN VAN ALPHEN, 2000
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A folio from the story of Shalibhadra, Rajasthan, 1776, S De. Vries, Amsterdam. The painting depicts Rajgriha (Bihar) with its main road running through the centre of town. The street is bustling with activity: Merchants in traditional attire sit in front of their shops and people are busy buying and selling. Scenes of domestic life are portrayed in the houses
seventh century AD, and the Yasastilaka of Somadeva Suri composed in 959 AD at Gangadhara near modern Dharwar. The Varangacarita is set during the time of the final embodiment of the twenty-second Ford maker, Neminath or Aristanemi. The text begins with the Ford maker's first and chief disciple, Varadatta explaining the meaning of dharma and teaching that the fate of man is conditioned by his actions. In order to liberate the soul from its worldly bondage, Varadatta recommends penitential activities such as fasting, mortification of the body and meditation. The prince Varanga is led by Varadatta's preaching to become a Jain monk, and by following the course of conduct recommended by Varadatta he successfully conquers his passions and finally achieves liberation. Somadeva's Yasastilaka is written partly in verse and partly in prose. Its main concern is with ahimsa, the Jain doctrine of non-violence. In the first part, Somadeva relates the story of how King Maradatta - who intended to perform a huge sacrifice of all types of living beings including humans to the goddess Candamari so that he could obtain supernatural powers - abandoned his plan and was converted to Jainism through the teachings of the young Jain monks, Abhayaruci and Abhayamati. The fourth chapter contains a version of the famous story of Yasodhara who was condemned to a series of unpleasant and frightening rebirths because he sacrificed a cock made out of flour. The point of the story is that a person's future state is determined by the intention behind his actions.
The commentaries on the Shvetambara canonical text, the Avasyaka Sutra are the most important formative elements in the development of the Shvetambara story collections. The Avasyaka Sutra itself is a fairly short text. It describes the six obligatory duties to be performed daily by Jain ascetics and lay people. Explanatory stories were incorporated into the commentaries on the Sutra
composed by such authors as Jinadasa and Haribhadra. Later authors used these commentaries as a source for the preparation of anthologies or treasuries (kosas) of didactic stories and for the composition of biographies of important figures in Jainism, such as the works of Hemachandra mentioned above.
An interesting example of the Shvetambara story collection is the Lilavatisari composed by Jinaratna Suri in 1284 AD. Written in Sanskrit, it is an epitome of an earlier work in Prakrit which is now lost. The first twelve chapters of the Lilavatisari are concerned with the consequences of particular faults: anger, pride, falsehood, hypocrisy, theft, greed, addiction to the pleasures of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing are the themes of the first twelve chapters. The remaining twelve chapters describe the initiation, enlightenment and final liberation of the leading characters.
In future issues of Jain Spirit I hope to write a series of short articles on Jain stories, giving examples of their contents and explanations of their moral teachings. A good selection of Jain stories can be found in The Clever Adulteress and Other Stories: A Treasury of Jain Literature edited by Phyllis Granoff and published by Mosaic Press in 1990. My translation of Hemachandra's The Lives of the Jain Elders was published in Oxford World's Classics in 1998. Another good anthology of Jain stories in English is V. M. Kulkarni's A Treasury of Jain Tales, published by the Shardaben Chimanbhai Research Centre, Ahmedabad, 1994.
Richard Fynes has a PhD in Jainism from Oxford University and is a professor at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.
June - August 2001
Jain Spirit
39
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