Jaina Political Thought

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

Page 28

the monks but also of the laity, though it is true that much of the canon has been lost and the loss presumably is heavier with those texts which did not directly deal with matters of interest to the monks. We have to remember that in the earlier stages the texts were not preserved as written books but only as oraltradition which the monks had to memorize. It would be natural for their forgetfulness to concentrate on the area of least interest to them.
he fact is that although preserved principally by the monks, the Jaina tradition drew its founders from the ruling aristocracy. It upheld not only the ideal of monastic life as the highest ideal but also the ideal of righteous living in society including the ideal of the righteous ruler. Like Buddha, Mahavira did not despair of advising the rulers of the time and, as mentioned before, it is to one such occasion that Hemacandra traces the beginnings of Arhanniti.
In thinking of the Jaina doctrine of renunciation andthe Jaina institution of mendicancy, we must also think of the challenge which it implied to traditional society in the 6th century B.C. While the distinction between eternal and temporal existence was well known in the Vedic tradition which then regulated society, the conclusion that this justified the renunciation of the world without further ado was wholly repugnant to that tradition. In the beginning and for a long time the Vedic tradition had no place for the renunciation of the world in a categorical manner. The institution of the Brahmacarya and Garhapatya constituted the anciently recognised scheme of life. Later the idea of repairing to the forests made its appearance in the Vedic tradition but the purpose of such retirement was to meditate over the mysteries and symbolism of ritual. Although economic life was renounced in this asrama, family and ritual were not wholly abandoned. The recognition of mendicancy as an asrama was tardy and
ed only in the age of the sutras. This was in all probability the acceptance of an influence from the Sramana traditions. I may mention here that the usual opinion from Jacobi to Kane holds a contrary position, which I have disputed elsewhere.3
The Vedic tradition thus came to recognise mendicancy only in a limited manner by making it a coherent part of its ritualistic and activistic conception of life at once social,moral and religious. Jaina mendicancy was totallly at variance with such a conception. In the Vedic conception the eternal and the temporal are not contradicatory since the temporal is merely the manifestation of the eternal. Eternal being is personal (Purusa) and willingly creates the world out of itself. This makes the created world a limited representaion of the eternal and gives to it the character not only of present sacredness but also the self-transcendence of a sign and symbol. The world is divine and life sacred and yet everything in it must be