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Jaina View of Life
sphere. It has been accepted as a moral principle in Indian thought and religion. Gandhiji has extended the principle of nonviolence to the social and political fields. For him nonviolence was a creed. He developed a method and a technique of nonviolence for attaining social and political justice. Zimmer says that Ahimsā, non-violence or non-killing is the first principle in the Dharma of saints or sages by which they lift themselves out of the range of the normal human action.
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In the history of Indian thought Ahimsa arose out of the needs of resisting the excesses of violence performed in the name of religion and for the sake of salvation at the time of sacrifices. Animal sacrifice was prevalent in the Vedic and to some extent in Upanisadic periods. However, a gradual awareness of undesirability of animal sacrifice was being felt at the time of Upanisads. In the Upanisads we get passages where the virtues of non-violence have been upheld. In the Chandogya Upanisad life is described as a great festival in which qualities like tapas, self-renunciation and Ahimsa (non-violence) are expressed.85
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In the Brhadaraṇyaka Upaniṣad we are asked to meditate on horse sacrifice. Self-discipline, generosity, straight-forwardness and ahimsa are the qualities that one should develop." Radhakrishnan writes that the authors of the Upanisads had a sufficient sense of the historic to know that their protest would become ineffective if it should demand a revolution in things.88 In the Bhagavadgita we get a description of the qualities that we should possess in order to be perfect."9 Absolute non-injury is prescribed by the Yoga system.00 Himsa is the root of all evil. It should be avoided by all means. Non-injury is the root of all
85. Chan. Up. iii, 16.
86.
Brh. Up. i, 1, 2.
87.
Chan. Up. iii.
88. Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 148 Allen & Unwin, 1941,
89. Bhagavadgita. Canto. 16.
90. Yoga Sutra ii, 30 and Bhasya.
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