Sambodhi 2007 Vol 31

Author(s): J B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 62

56
MUKUL RAJ MEHTA
SAMBODHI
Vedic tradition accepted asceticism only gradually and with some reluctance”.
Prof. Pande says that it is thus fair to assume that while the older Vedic tradition emphasized the values of social obligations and their fulfillment through ritual and sacrament preparing man for wisdom ultimately, there existed by its side another tradition, less known and fugitive, the tradition of Sramanism which was characterized by its doctrine of Samsara and its attendant attitudes of pessimism and mendicancy. Now an analysis of the earliest portions of the Jaina canon reveals that Sramanism thus characterized could well summarize the original Nirgrantha doctrine. In this sense it would be correct to say that the Jaina tradition gives us the earliest and most authentic version of an ancient Sramanic stream of thought which can be distinguished from the well known orthodox Vedic tradition. How challenging the situation was, we must seek to realize through an effort of the imagination in view of the habit acquired by our later experience of treating such contradiction as part of a syncretic harmony where the orthodox and the heterodox, Vedic and non-Vedic tradition cooperate as elements of a larger and catholic Indian tradition. Theory and practice of Jaina ethics would not be intelligible unless it is placed in this socio-historical milieu. The Nirgranthas challenged the absoluteness of social obligations, relating them to the lower, egoistical nature and passions of man. Against these social obligations they placed the obligation of man to follow his own spiritual nature.
The Jainas, however, strongly held that action has reality and relative freedom and that it needs to be regulated by principles which can be discovered through spiritual intuition and through the tradition of wisdom in which such intuition has found expression.
Regarding the analysis of action, Prof. Pande tells that the Jaina view is said to be the affirmation of the soul, affirmation of action, affirmation of the world. 8 Action or Kriya has its source in the innate spontaneity or power (virya) of the soul. This purely spiritual power of the soul provides the appreciative focus (upayoga) to the mental activity which includes diverse cognitive states and impulses and their resultant disposition and effects. Mental activity in turn induces physical motion and the result is the inflow of material particles, in particular, of the infinite and ubiquitous subtle particles of Karman which contact the soul and cover up its parts in diverse ways. This is the process of Yoga and Bandha.10 From the innate freedom of the spiritual will to its getting helplessly caught in the meshes