Sambodhi 1980 Vol 09

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

Page 82

Ram Prakash Poddar
of one's condcuct in the previous life that one is born as a Ksatriya or a Cāņdāla or a Bukkasa, 23
Since one's caste-status depended on one's own conduct in the previous life and could be further improved by good conduct and austerities, one need not bemoan one's low origin. It should be accepted as a reality of life-a reality for which the subject himself is responsible and no one else. Any envious tendency may swerve him from his highest goal viz. emancipation. Sambhūta as a Sopāka ascetic, had coveted the grandeur of a king. He became a king no doubt, but the track of spiritual well-being was lost in the wilderness of physical gratifications.
From the Gotrakarma theory it accruse that the caste hierarchy was headed by the Kşatriyas with the Cāņdālas and the Bukkasas at the bottom. True Brāhmaṇas were the abandoners and conversely all true abandoners were Brāhmaṇas whatever their origin - the most detached soul, viz. the Tirthankara, being the greatest of all Brāhmaṇas. 24 As regards occupations it seems that the conventional ones were acceptable with certain reservations. It has been said that a Kşatriya, by his innate nature, was attached to power and possession.25 But he wis not only free to renounce his attachment but it was his most sacred duty to do so at th: earliest opportunity and take to ascetic practices. This ideal has been established in the ballad of king Nami (Uttar. IX) where a ruling monarch abdicates and decides to become a monk though besought to retain the sceptre and perform chivalrous and heroic act worthy of a Ksatriya.
A pious householder's life is suggested to Nami as an alternative to total renunciation; through the observance of Pratimās26 a householder too could gradually rise to total renunciation. But he prefers to become a houseless ascetic then and there. Rathanemi (Uttar. XXII) invites Rājīmati to enjoy the pleasures of the householder's stage of life and thereafter practise asceticism 27. But she rejects it as an infirmity. Similar advice is given by Mrgā to her son.28 But he convinces her that sooner worldly life is abandoned the better. Sons of the priest Bhrgu propose to renounce the world in their childhood. The father objects - those who are learned in the Vedas hold that there is no salvation for the sonless one. He adv. ises them to read the Vedas, enjoy the pleasures of life, beget sons and then having entrusted their worldly affairs to their sons, they could retire to hermitage. But they disregard their father's advice and renounce the world in the first stage of their life 29
Thus there is not only the freedom but also a constant encouragement to practise asceticism on all levels and stages of life. But what is much