Sambodhi

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 60

Suzuko Ohira
The animist view of the world as such does not necessarily lead one to have the doctrine of non-violence in the capacity of fundamental proposition of a religious order unless it is supported by a certain belief or a causal theory going against violence. The belief in vaira must have been this supporting creed. Vaira, meaning anger, hostility or enmity, is here a principle of retribution that a victim emits against its assailant to return his revenge, which would hit the assailant without fail and get bound with the assailant's soul until due retribution is brought out. When looked from the side of an assailant, vaira is the very sin that he committed by his own self. And sin was considered as something material in the olden days which could be cleansed by the water or burnt up by the fire of tapas. Vaira must have been then considered as something material and tangible. The naive animist position supported by the belief in vaira can easily for. mulate the doctrine of anarambha, which must have been the central teaching of Parśva.
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This theory of vaira was early discovered by Dr. Dixit in his article, The Problems of Ethics and Karma Doctrine as Treated in Bhagavatisūtra" (Sambodhi, II-3), the concerned paragraph of which is quoted below for its importance in the historical context. "The Bhagavatī treatment of the problems of karma-doctrine has its own value. In this connection a peculiar verbal usage of the text deserves notice. Thus when it intends to say that a person commits a kriyā (kriyām karoti) it sometimes says that this person is touched by this kriya (kriyaya spṛtaḥ). Certainly, the phrase 'touched by kriya' used here is somewhat odd but it seems to have been patterned after a popular phrase of those time. For in the dialogue considering the case of one person killing an animal and another person; killing this person himself, we are told that the first person is touched by the enmity of the animal (mṛgavaireņa spṛṣṭaḥ), the second person touched by the enmity of the first person (puruṣavairena spṛṣṭaḥ). Now the modern anthropologists tell us of the primitive peoples who believe that when a person commits a crime against another person this crime hounds the first person as long as it does not bring upon him an appropriate disaster. And in all probability such a belief was prevalent among that circle of Indian populace which was accustomed to the phrase "touched by the enmity of so and so." This in turn became the starting point for the Jaina authors developing their doctrine of karma which in its essence is but a refined version of the belief in question. The first step in this connection must have been to speak of the technical concept 'Kriya' instead of the popular concept 'vaira'. Then the idea must have occurred to those Jainas that if riya is to touch a person it must be somthing tangible, and thus came into existence the concept of kriya treated as a designated karma and one