Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

Author(s): Narendra Nath Bhattacharya
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

Page 90

The Incipient Stage 69 their aim to exterminate all Karma or to stop the influx of new karma which Jainism taught. Corresponding to Mahavira's Vinayavāda, we have the Buddhist expression Sīlabbata-parāmāsa.
In view of what we have noticed above, we can form a fair idea about the philosophical views current in the days of the Buddha and Mahavira. It is interesting to note that most of the schools mentioned in the Buddhist and Jain texts represent the idea originating from fear, helplessness and frustration. Most of the schools belonging to the Buddhist Pubbanta and Aparanta Kappikas correspond to the different groups of the Akriyāvādins mentioned in the Jain texts. They believed that all human actions and endeavours were fruitless. Others, like the Adiccasamuppannikas, failed to put any trust on the law of causation; the Ajñānavādins or Amarāvikkhepikas declined to give any categorical answer to the questions relating to life and universe. The followers of the various doctrines of non-action mainly speculated on what remained after the extermination of the mortal body. The extremists like the Ucchedevädins or Ditthadhammanibbanavadins of the Buddhist texts or the Sayavadins or Samucchedavādins or Na-santi-paralokavādins of the Jain texts identified body with soul and sought the summum bonum of life in worldly pleasures, while others debated on the question of the existence of soul apart from body, whether it remained conscious or unconscious after death, whether it was material or non-material, and so on. All of these doctrines were directly or indirectly concerned with death and annihilation. This spirit of fear and frustration, by which these philosophical schools were characterised, had evidently a social basis, the origin of which must be sought in the stupendous socio-political transformation which was taking place in that time through immense bloodshed and wholesale massacre.
Purana Kassapa
Indeed the immense bloodshed and wholesale massacre, the senseless, unlawful and irrational activities by which the then public life was characterised compelled Pūraņa Kassapa, a senior contemporary of the Buddha and Mahāvīra, to declare when he was asked about the advantage in the life of a recluse: "To him who acts, O king, or causes another to act, to him who mutilates or causes another to mutilate, to him who punishes or causes another to punish, to him who causes grief or torment, to him who trembles or causes others to tremble, to him who kills a living creature, who takes