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PROLEGOMENA TO PRAKRITICA et JAINICA
non-violence always with reference to kāyena, manasā and vācā - this idea ultimately leads to trigupti which consists of vag-gupti (control of speech), kāyagupti (control of activity of body) and monogupti (control of mind) and to bhāşā-samiti (care in speaking) of Jain philosophy.
Having said this, let me now pass on to the topic to see how the Jains have developed this idea of non-violence in their literature. Tolerance as a kind of non-violence
Here in this context it will not be out of place to talk something about tolerance which is tagged as a part of non-violence. There is a class of people who labour under the idea that "tolerance is not a traditional Jain virtue.” This is far from truth. It is true that there is no direct word for tolerance in Sanskrit or in Pali and Prakrit. But the Sanskrit words-sahana, sahişņutā, sahana-kşamatā, sahana-silatā and the like are used to indicate the idea of tolerance. There is another Sanskrit word sahitram which is also used in the sense of tolerance, forbearance, patience and so on.
There is no common Indo-European term for tolerance, unless we presume that IE *bhero which has Greek dépo, dopéw, Sanskrit bharā-mi (bíbharmi), Latin ferð, Gothic baíra all meaning "I bear", has the significance of tolerance; otherwise, the idea of tolerance is expressed differently in different IE languages. The Sanskrit words are formed from the root sah., the Greek has the roots åvaoxéw (åvaoxetós), ávékTW (ávektos, adv. å vektős), ÉRLTPÉW (Plato's OÚK ÉTitpettéov, "it cannot be tolerated), Eu ópntos and so on, and Latin has toleratus, tolerantia from the Latin root tolerare. Though all these words developed differently in different IE languages, the idea of tolerance is as old as IE.
1. For this see my book, Introducing Jainism, Calcutta, 2002,
pp. 57-64.
