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K. K. Dixit
never given up that a monk aspires after moksa, and it ever remained positive conviction that only a monk is entitled to attain mokşa. But it began to be conceded that a monk falling short of the ideal would attain so far as the householders are not mokşa but birth in some heaven. And concerned even the most pious of them had a right to hope for just birth in some heaven - mokşa being denied to them ex-hypothesi. The crux of the situation graphically flashes before the reader's mind when he learns from a passage about the inner cogitation of a monk who has committed a sin but is afraid of confessing and atoning for the same; thus this monk is made to say to himself, "What is the harm if I do not confess and atono for my sin? When even the householders can possibly be born as a god I must in any case hope to be born at least among the lowest grade of gods, " It is in this background that we have to appreciate the fact that in almost all Bhagavan storles a common motif is how a dedicated and devoted disciple of Mahavira (or of another tirthankara) - mostly a monk, rarely a house bolder earns through his meritorious acts the right to be next born among a particular grade of gods. These stories are symptomatic of profound change introduced in the character of Jainism as a monastic religious sect. The social conditions responsible for this change remain be determined,
The oldest Jaina authors advocated a religion of world-renunciation under the plea that the life of worldly success is a life of sinfulness. Now from independent sources we know that the dominant religious trend of the contemporary Vedic society-a trend that has found expression in the Brahmana texts - stood for the pursuit of worldly success of all sorts through a performance of all sorts of yajñas. Viewed thus the contrast between this religious trend on the one hand and that represented by a monastic sect like Jainism on the other was too unmistakable to be missed, However the social message of a religious trend has of necessity to be couched ing language that speaks of things and processes supramundane. Thus the Brahamana texts spoke of a yajha meticulously performed by the Brahmin priest bringing about wordly fortune to the client concerned while the Jaina spoke of a well-pursued ascetic life putting an end to the transgmigratory cycle of the monk concerned. And as thus conceived a yajñic performance is as mysterious an exercise as an ascetic performance. But that is no the vital point so far as it concerns evaluating the social message of the religious trends in question. For in this connection the thing to noted is that one trend extols the life of worldly success, the other condemns It. As things stood, it could mean only one thing. The gu between the possessing class and the dispossessed emergent within the fold of Vedic society must have become visibly large at the time whe the protestant religious trend took its rise, so large that it began to distur
