Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 199

192
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sions the Lord had to explain and uphold these two principles against the anyatirthikas incomprehension and disbelief. The self, he says, is identical with the soul in all such circumstances as may arise from moral conduct, mental functions and the like (XVII 23 = 723b). To Kālāsa Vesiyaputta, a monk of Parsva's creed, he shows that it therefore is the indispensable basis of selfdiscipline etc. (I 95 99a). On the other hand, the tenet of the uncheckable process of action (E. Leumann's 'irrevocabile factum'), which from of old the Jainas have held in such high esteem that its solemn enunciation was given the honour of opening the Viy. itself (I 11=13a), apparently was one of the greatest stumbling blocks to Mahāvīra's contemporaries. Not only was it flatly rejected by the anyatirthikas (I 101, section a= 102b), the same even denied the Theras to draw the most self-evident conclusions from it, e.g. (VIII 7' 379a) to regard as their property something that had been given to them but did not reach them by some cause or other (as for instance the case described in VIII 62 = 374a). Even Mahāvīra's kinsman and disciple Jamāli (IX 332- 485a), as is well known, could not accept its truth, yea even the gods in heaven quarrelled about the validity of its implications (XVI 5 706a seqq.).
The irrevocabile factum principle shared that great popularity as a topic of debate and a basis for attacking the Jaina faith only with one other tenet, viz. the doctrine of the so-called atthikayas. Unfortunately the two anyatirthika fragments dealing with it (VII 101 323b and XVIII 74 750b) give very little information about its real tenor1. The difficulty of the atthikaya theory, in my opinion, also appears from the fact that in both cases the people first addressed by the dissidents (among which there probably were Ajivikas as has been stated above) do not answer their questions at all: Goyama advises them to thrash out the question among themselves and Madduya only shows that certain things that lie beyond imperfect people's sensory perception (e.g. the fire in the arani wood) prove to exist all the same.
For which s. Viy. II 10
147b seqq.
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