________________
The Problems of Ethics and Karma
the sensitive souls like Buddha and Mahavira. The stories about the mighty prosperity of the families of Buddha and Mahavira themselves are to a large extent pious concoctions of the later generations, but even if they are not there is nothing incongruous about the idea that certain high-souled members of the affluent class should rise against the misdeeds of their own class, Be that as it may, the monastic religious sects of India were in their earliest phase a genuine protestant movement seeking under supramundane slogans a redressal of the socio-economic injustice vitiating the mundane life. This turbulant phase of India's socio-economic as well as religious - history came to an end by the time of Asoka who recognised it to be a foremost task of the state to see to it that the downtrodden masses - the dasabhṛtakas of his inscriptions - are subjected to no undue socio-economic strain, It was then that all religious sects of the time - Brahminical as well as monastic were reduced to the status of an exclusively religious phenomenon -that is, to the status of movements exclusively devoted to the supramundane interests of their respective followers; and it was then that the original social message of the monastic religious sects became largely obsolete. Now too these monastic sects would emphasize the virtues of a monk's life, but they would now also sing the praise of such householders as chose to follow the code of conduct prescribed for them by these sects. True, these plous householders were promised not mokşa but birth in some heaven, but it was added that a monk too would attain not mokşa but birth lo Some heaven unless his conduct was absolutely in conformity to the ideal set for him. Such were the conditions under which the Jalna authors became so much pre-occupied with the problems of a householder's duties and mythology in the first place, mythology concerning gods and goddesses; and then it was that they become so enthusiastic about narrating stories that were primarily meant to edify the pious but semi-educated householder, A perusal of the Bhagavati stories undertaken from this whole point of view should prove highly instructive. In any case, to judge from the simplicity of their form as also from certain cliches common to them all these stories broadly belong to the same category and same chronological stratum as those collected in the five Anga texts that are of the form of collection of stories. These five Anga-texts (as also Praśnavyakarana) find no mention in the catalogue of texts which the old disciplinary text Vyavahara-sutra prescribes for a monk. This catalogue includes the remaining six Anga-texts (presumably, Acaranga under the designation Acaraprakalpa) together with 80 many other texts that are otherwise unknown, and the conclusion is inescapable that the five Anga texts collecting stories (as also PrašnavyaKarana) are a fairy late composition. This in its turn means that the thesis current since very long that the twelve Anga texts were composed by the direct disciples of Mahavira must be a fairly late adoption and a part and
-
Sambodhi 2,3
11
