Sambodhi 1980 Vol 09

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

Page 45

Buddhist and Jaina Concepts of Man...
Renuciation is not unknown among the Brahmanical schools. Indeed Yājñavalkya, the great teacher of the Upanişads and the supreme Brahmavādin, is portrayed as renouncing the world and his own immense wealth. But one must remember that he had led a long householder's life, had had two wives, and had amassed a large fortune from his patron, King Janaka. His renunciation was seen as the natural culmination of a long, useful, active life, in which the other puruşārthas, artha and kāma, were fully realized. When he left home, he was able to do it with a clear conscience and in the open, saying farewell to his dear wife, Maitreyi.3 Compare this with the story of the Buddha's renunciation; when he was barely thirty years old, Gautama shunned the worldly life and abandoned his wife and child in the middle of the night, not daring to announce his departure.. Moreover he was not content to do this on his own, leaving bis aged parents and his young wife; he took with him into his so-called "state of homelessness" thousands of other young people, whose motto was :
Full of hindrance is the household life, A path for the dust of passion. Free as the air is the life one, Who has renounced all worldly things.4
Contemporary records tell us that the women, when they saw these young men who had abandoned professions and homes and taken on the yellow robes of the monastic order, criticized and disparaged them, saying, "The recluse, Gautama, wants to make us childless. The recluse, Gautama, is bent on making us widows. The recluse, Gautama, gets on by breaking up families."5
But the Buddha, we are told, assured his followers that the women's crying would subside after seven days and instructed them to respond by saying, “Verily, great heroes lead by the true dharma. Who will be jealous of the wise, led by dharma ?"6 there is no doubt that by the word, dharma, we should understand not the Brahmanical svadharma but rather spiritual salvation, mokşa, nirvāṇa, the goal of the śramaņas.
We find a similar situation when we turn to the career of the Jaina teacher, Mahāvíra. According to the Digambaras he never married, and so the question of his involvement with society can not even be addressed. According to the Svetāmbaras he married a princess and fathered a daughter, and, even while he was still in his mother's womb, he was sensitive enough to vow that he would not renounce the world until his parents had died and thus spare them the suffering of his leaving the householder's life. Conveniently they died when he was about thirty years old. Although