Sambodhi 1973 Vol 02

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

Page 39

Evolution of the Jaina Treatment of Ethical Problems
33
The Acaranga I Śrutaskandha and Sutrakṛtānga I Śrutaskandha repeatedly dilate upon the hardsbips that a Jaina monk is expected to put up with and the theme was systematized by the later Jaina theoreticians in the form of the doctrine of 22 parīşabas. All this might suggest that the Jaina authors were somehow conscious that their monastic code of conduct was particularly barsb. In fact, however, with the later authors at least the question could not have been one of emphasizing the barshness of their monastic code of conduct; wbat they would at the most emphasize was the appropriateness of this code of conduct. For example, the Buddhists are supposed to have been advocates of a rather mild monastic code of conduct, but in their disciplinary texts there are cases where an excessively mild practice is disapproved of just as there are cases where an excessively harsh practice is disapproved of. On the other hand, the Jainas are supposed to have been an advocate of a rather harsh monastic code of conduct; but the example of the Digambara-Versus Svetāmbara controversy on the question of clothing suggests that a Jaina theoretician too was ready to condemn what he considered to be an excessively harsh practice just as he was ready to condemn what he considered to be an excessively mild one. That is to say, in the manner already binted it was only in the earliest stage of Indian social development that the Jajnas seem to have been an advocate of a compara. tively harsher monastic code of conduct. The matter needs further consideration,
In the course of bistorical development the monastic movement gradually lost its original social significance. For the social task of mitigating the ill-consequences of economic inequality which this move. ment had been performing in its own manner gradually became the exclusive concern of state, the process reaching some sort of culmination in the state-policy of Asoka, a policy in its essentials followed by the entire lot of subsequent Indian rulers. A by-product of this course of development was the circumstance that different religious sects and subsects-Brahmanical as well as monastic-gradually came to possess their respective exclusive circles of lay followers which, of course, would expand and contract with the change of conditions. And as thus constituted the different religious sects would now pursue broadly similar practices. A most noteworthy illustration is the practice of idol-worship which was sooner or later adopted by Brahmanism, Buddhism as well as Jainism though none of these religious sects had allowed for it in the beginning. And so far as Buddhism and Jainism were concerned the mutual simiJarity of practices went still further. Thus since very beginning the Buddhists were having their own monasteries where monks would put up for a longer or shorter period; but the Jainas till late objected to the practice of a monk staying at a building meant exclusively for bis use Sambodhi 2,1