Sambodhi 1972 Vol 01

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

Page 10

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DIXIE
terms which even the Bhagayatısätra employs (to say nothing of the late texts with finally standardized technical terms) but also because of the general outlook on life This leads us to consider a question of very gre. importance
Today it soems obvious that the Jaina church should be divided int a class of monks and a class of laymen But thero exist certain Jaina tex to which auch division is perhaps foreign There we find the class of monk confronted with the reguler society as a whole - uodivided into a Jaida secto and a non-Jaina one. The reason 18 that in the time of Buddha and Mahz vira and in their part of the country the regular society collectively stoc host to the mass of mooks grouped in the form of numerous fraternitie Not that every monk was welcome at every door For people had the fre dom to make choice of the particular monks they would like to entertain as also the freedom to refuse alms to a monk But they were not groupe to the form of various lay communities owing allegiance to the respectiv fraternities of monks All this of course means that the society in questic felt the necessity of having in its midst so many monks - and the monks ko many persuasions The necessity was substantially of the same kind was served by the Brahmin - that is to say, essentially and primarily a relig ous kind of necessity Nay, the Brahmin himself was present by the si of these monastic fraternities and found himself almost in the same situ tion as the latter - that ia to say, be too was without a fixed cllentele Hc and why the situation took such a turn is a matter for investigation b that it did so seems certain Gradually, however, the regular society did g divided into several lay com muities owing allegiance to Buddhism, Jainisi Brahmanism eta But since most of the Jaina texts now before us postde this roligious subdivision of the sociely an impression is created as if the was no period when the Jaina monks catered to the needs of the socie as a whole rather than to those of a subsector thereof But a careful rea ing of the Acaranga I Srutaskandha, Sztrakytanga 1 Śrutaskandha (as also certa chapters of the Ultaradhyayana) should convince one that these texts do I envisage the possibility of there belog a fixed community of Jaina laymi Here contrast is constantly made belween the life of a monk and that a householder - the former something to be commended, the latter somethi to be condemned In this connection the later texts make use of the cruc conoept of Sraddha (abbreviation for samyat-Sraddha and havlog for ita ayi nyms samyaktva, san yagdisti, samyagdarśana) and they tell us that what di ingqishos a Jalna householder from the non-Jajaa is that sraddha 19 presi in the former and absent in the latter Again, these texts detail a num of ath1co-religious performances which a particular Jaina householder und takes and which set him midway between an ordinary Jalga householt