Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekanta for Contemporary Life

Author(s): Tara Sethia
Publisher: California State Polytechnic University Pomona

Page 110

Christopher Chapple, "Religious Dissonance and Reconciliation"
I
with the Buddhists.2 Then I will turn to a troublesome story about Haribhadra that attributes to him horrendous acts of violence. will examine select writings from the Haribhadra corpus that address the issue of religious plurality in a conciliatory fashion. I will also offer some observations regarding the workability of a theory of nonviolence (ahimsā) as suggested by Haribhadra and pacifism in light of the contemporary situation.
3
Jainism, since at least the fifth century B.C.E., has existed within a pluralistic context. Many of the early converts to Buddhism hailed from the Jain faith, as can be seen in the collection of poems about women, the Therigāthā, which developed shortly after the Buddha's passing." These poems indicate that the majority of Jains were prosperous merchants, and their mendicants followed highly rigorous discipline that continues to characterize the Jain community even today. From their original homeland in northeast India, Jains spread through all parts of India, particularly in the south (Karnataka and Madhyapradesh) and the west (Gujarāt and Rajasthan). With the exception of the near-mythical account of the Hindu blood-letting of Jains in medieval Tamil Nadu, Jains seem mostly to have avoided persecution without overly compromising their core religious practices and identity.
One source for understanding the survivability of the Jains can be found in their philosophical approach to pluralism. On the one hand, Jainism contains perhaps the world's most plural and individualistic theology. Numerous souls, present from beginning less time, countlessly reincarnate, taking on new forms depending upon the action or karma in their prior births. No god created these souls. No god or person controls these souls. Each
2
See Padmanabh S. Jaini, "The Disappearance of Buddhism and the Survival of Jainism in India: A Study in Contrast" in Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies (Delhi; Motilal Banarsidass, 2000).
3
Susan Murcott, The First Buddhist Women: Translations and Commentaries on the Therigatha (Berkeley, California: Parallax Press, 1991).
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