Positive Non Violence

Author(s): Kanhaiyalal Lodha, Dalpatsingh Baya
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 34

any creature, and he has done it with a sense of duty, he cannot be considered as violent. Also, whatever is done carefully and vigilantly becomes least violent. Even when there is some attachment in some activity, if that attachment, too, is of noble kind, the violence committed would be minimal.
The second consideration in deciding the question of greater or lesser violence is that if there is a choice between two types of violence, we must choose the alternative that involves lesser violence. The Jaina thinkers have considered this lesser or greater quantity of violence not on the basis of number of creatures involved but on the basis of stage of development of the creatures involved. If the choice be between committing violence to thousands of one-sensed creatures and that to one five-sensed being, according to this consideration the violence to one five sensed being amounts to greater than that to thousands of onesensed beings.
This question was raised in the time of Bhagvan Mahāvīra also. In those times there was a sect of austere monks that was called Hastitāpasa, which used to kill one elephant in a year and sustain themselves by eating its flesh for the rest of the year. They claimed that they were the least violent as they killed only one creature per year (Sūtrakṛtānga, 2/6/53-54). Monk Ardraka refuted this viewpoint by saying that this viewpoint was misleading. He clarified that killing one five-sensed animal like an elephant was more violent as compared to killing thousands of one-sensed beings. This question was considered even more seriously in Bhagavati-sūtra and there, it was said that killing one five-sensed animal like an elephant was more violent as compared to killing thousands of one-sensed beings and that killing an accomplished monk was even more violent as compared to killing a five-sensed being (Bhagavatīsūtra, 9/34/106-07). Thus, according to Jaina philosophy, the question of greater or lesser violence is to be decided not on the basis of number of creatures involved but on the basis of their sensory or spiritual development. When we have to choose between two alternatives involving greater or lesser violence we must
Praface
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