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NARRATIVE TALE IN JAIN LITERATURE
XXIX
THE STORY OF VYĀSA:
Vyasa certainly knew that his poem was full of lies, but he ventured to dish up the inconsistent and senseless stuff to mankind, after he had convinced himself, by an experiment, of the stupidity of men. He placed a pot on the bank of the Ganga and began to heap sand over it. Immediately the people came along and followed his example, so that after a short time the place where the first pot stood could no longer be determined.
Jain Education International
XXX
HEMACANDRA ON AHIMSA
from Yogasāstra
119
"Ahimsa is like a loving mother of all beings,
Ahimsa is like a stream of nectar in the desert of Samsara, Ahimsa is a course of rain-clouds to the forest fire of suffering, The best healing-herb for the beings tormented by the disease Called the perpetual return of existence, is Ahimsā."39
[All the stories are collected from Maurice Winternitz's History of Indian Literature, Vol. II, Calcutta 1933].
39. It is, however, very characteristic of Hemacandra that, at the request of the same King Kumārapāla, whom he sought to win over to ascetic morality by the Yogaśāstra, he also wrote a Laghvarhannīti-Śāstra," Short Manual of the Art of Governing for Jainas," which cannot be said to be entirely in conformity with the principle of Ahimsa. More will be said of this Niti-Sastra in Vol. III.
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