Jaina Political Thought

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

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This Sramanic view represents a sharp reaction to such socio-centric or secular views in which the society and the state loom large as the externally available saviours of man.
In the Sramanic world of thought human happiness is determined by a transcendental cause, viz, the past karman of the individual Each individual is subject to his own separate destiny. This invisible force of kaman working by immutable laws is accessible to a transcendental wisdom. Of all the Sramana sects, the Jainas have recorded this transcendental science of karmon in the most detailed manner in their traditional writings.
The Jainas, thus, rejected the Vedas as well as the Arthasastra as sources of right guidance. The Nandisutras include these within a comprehensive list of types of false knowledge arising from words - mithyā sruta? These are the products of intellectual constructions which seek to be self-reliant, and disregard the tradition of transcendental wisdom. They are 'sacchanda-buddhi-mai-vigappiyā' The same description may be seen in the Anuyagadvara where these, the Vedas and the Arthasastra are placed within loiyam no-agamao-bhavasuyam They do not arise from the perfect spiritual knowledge of the Kevalins, nor from their verbal communication as traditionally recorded.
The Jaina view stands on three pillars viz., Atmā vada, Lokāvāda and KriyavadaMan is a spiritual being enmeshed in matter and sorrounded by a world of material bodies inhabited by souls of different grades of perfection and imperfection. Man is not the ruler of a material world to be exploited for his pleasure, for such exploitation only degrades the spirit and inflicts injury on the souls which inhabit organic and inorganic forms of matter. In seeking material purpose man simply enmeshes himself in matter.
There is, however, another aspect of this situation.Man is endowed with the fredom of action and his actions are performed in a morally ordered world. Morality is universally held to require freedom as well as order. Modern thought cannot reconcile the idea of individual freedom with the determinism of natural and social science, and it cannot but think of order as an unrealized human idea, something to be tentatively discovered and gradually realized in social history. Freedom and order, thus both have meaning only in a historically evolving society rather than for an individual and spiritual being.
The source of this dilemma is the absolutization of the idea of natural science and the solution sought is in terms of history which is held to fulfil social being. The Jaina alternative is in terms of the transcendental science of karman which simultaneously ensures freedom as well as order. The
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