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52 PHILOSOPHY
UNDERSTANDING
rom earliest times, Jainism has been
characterised as a way of life in 1 which vratas or 'vows' play a very prominent role. One characteristic of a vrata is that it is an individual matter. Certainly the vows have a very strong social relevance, but it is up to the individual to decide which vows he or she wishes to adopt and to what extent. The vows help to improve the quality of life here and now, but they are also a means of influencing one's condition in the afterlife by influencing the accumulation of karma. Very prominent in Jain thought are the five main vows: ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha - not to harm other living beings, to speak the truth, not to steal, to be chaste and not to acquire possessions exorbitantly.
Jains have traditionally given most prominence to the first of these five vows, ahimsa, to such an extent that Jainism is often referred to as 'the religion of nonviolence! The reasons are understandable. Violence as a rule involves physical or vocal acting in the world, and its results are usually immediately visible: injury. death or expressions of suffering in the people or other living beings who are the victims of the violence. The world around us immediately impresses upon us some of the results of our actions. This is not always the case when one does not live and act in accordance with the other four major Jain vows.
Much of Jain literature, both the popular and the more scholarly, depict ahimsa as a kind of master-vow from which the others can be derived. Indeed, it is possible to see falsehood, theft, unchasteness as involving violence to some degree. But does it need to be so in the case of the accumulation of possessions? Surely not. It is remarkable that the Tattvarthasutra, the foremost Jain philosophical text, does not give ahimsa any special importance in comparison with the
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