Jaina Political Thought

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

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II THE VEDIC HIERARCHICAL THEORY
AND ITS JAINA CRITIQUE
The earliest Jaina sources reveal Jaina tradition to have been one of world-renouncing monks who rejected the authority of the current Vedic tradition as worldly and basedon false view. Now the Vedic tradition was undoubtedly worldly in the sense that it provided through its ritual system and socio-ethical codes an accepted direction and justification for the normal worldly life of the people, social, economic and political. Jainas, on
ne other hand, implied that this mode of justification put a premium on worldliness, an undoubted evil. They also implied that the very principles appealed to in the Vedic tradition rested on error.
Perhaps one may be disposed to offer a simple explanation of the Jaina criticism, which if true would make it largely irrelevant from the standpoint of political thought. One may say that since the Jaina tradition was primarily a monastic tradition, it compendiously disregarded the problems of secular life within which the activities of the state lie. Its attitude, thus, amounted to the ignoring of political life. Such an attitude can hardly be counted as a species of political thought. Thus Dr. Beni Prasad wrote that the Jaina sutras "are concerned far too much with eternity and salvation to trouble themselves with this ephemeral existence" and that "to the student of governmental theory the sutras as a whole are rather disappointing.” 1
It is true that the Jaina canon places eternity above ephemeral existence, as will doubtless be done by all right-minded persons aware of the distinction between the ephermeral and the etemal. Nevertheless, it does not follow that the temporal and eternal aspects of reality can be considered or understood in isolation. Even if eternity gives meaning to time, one cannot help living in time and arranging temporal affairs in order to prepare for eternity. Again, while man prepares for eternity, eternity remains for him only a matter of faith and this faith comes to him only as a temporal or historical tradition.
It is for this reason that the early Jaina canon is concerned not simply with the soul but also with matter. It prescribes not merely the conduct of
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