Jainthology

Author(s): Ganesh Lalwani
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 99

thought and practice of the times in which Karma primarily meant performance of Vedic rituals; ethical conduct waited as it were, in the ante-chamber; the soul in worldly bondage attained liberation by the grace of the gods; the chief agent in the world process is the all-pervading Brahman, of whom the individual soul, Atman, is, so to speak, a spark or reflection; and, the merits of renunciation and ascetical practices begin to be recognised. With regard to the last factor, a question arises, viz., is it normally to be expected that a semi-barbarous people of semi-nomadic habits as the Aryan immigrants into India were, whose forerunners had been cruel conquerers (as held by modern historians) who burnt, looted, killed, destroyed, burst embankments to flood human habitations, exulting in the successes they achieved by quick mobility by riding on horseback and by using iron weapons (harder and more effective than other metals)- both unknown to the people who inhabited India at the time, in spite of their higher civilisation and culture and intoxicated with all the enjoyments they regaled themselves with on the soil of India, is it normally to be expected, one may ask, for such a people to be thinking of renunciation and asceticism after only a few centuries, not more than five or six, of fully settling down in their new homeland? Very possibly not. We have therefore to look elsewhere for the roots of Jaina and kindred trends of thought. Intermingling of several ways of life and thought gives rise no doubt to exchange of ideas inevitable in co-existence in a common atmosphere, but we are speaking now of probable origins, not of formed or finished results.
The Aryan tribes on emigrating from their native homeland went to and settled down in many other lands to the east and west besides India, but in none of these are found the ancient traces of ascetical, monastic, pessimistic creeds practising Ahimsā, vegetarianism, mortification of the flesh, an itinerant life, or speculating on the nature and qualities of the individual soul, Atman or Jiva, or on rebirth and Karma, on the lines of the Jainas and other similar sects of ancient India. None of the other mighty cultures also that the yet more ancient world saw, viz., the Egyptians, the Sumerians or the Babylonians etc produced any such trends which therefore appear to be wholly Indian in origin. When such trends are at all met with in later days in other lands they can mostly be traced to Indian influenees transported abroad by various agencies.
We have thus to infer that these trends arose in pre-Aryan India, probably as an off-shoot of the civilisation of the times. It is here
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