Schools and Sects in Jaina Literature

Author(s): Amulyachandra Sen
Publisher: Vishwa Bharati Calcutta

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SCHOOLS AND SECTS IN JAINA LITERATURE
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There is an interesting account of a Brahman priest named Mahessaradatta who was learned in the Vedas, etc., and who in order to enhance the realm and power of his patron King Jiyasattu caused everyday a Brahman boy, a Kşatriya boy, a Vaiấya boy and a Sūdra boy to be seized and their hcarts extracted alive with which he performed homa sacrifices to propitiate the gods on behalf of the king. On the eighth and fourteenth lunar days he sacrificed two boys from each of the four castes, in the fourth month four boys from each caste, iu the sixth month eight boys, and after a year sixtcen boys from each caste. Whenever the king was attacked by an enemy, the priest caused eight hundred boys from each caste to be seized and performed homa 'sacrifices' with their hearts extracted alive. 50 Although this story is too monstrous to deserve credence it is curious how the underlying idea of offering human sacrifice on the eve of important undertakings, hinted in the older Brahmanic literature, still lingered in the popular mind.51
In all the narrative passages in the canonical literature of the Jainas the constantly recurring formula about people performing domestic sacrifices, expiatory ceremonies, etc.,-nhāyākayavalikammā kayakouyamanglapäyachhitta-is used to describe the daily life of people who are not yet converted by Mahāvīra to the Nirgrantha doctrine or in respect of whom the question of conversion does not arise. All these persons, from princes to peasants, belonged apparently to the Brahmanical fold in the absence of any reference pointing to their adherence to any other creed.
Making a slight departure from the order we are following in our treatment of these various philosophical system, we shall take up at this stage somic views which are associated with the Brahmanical fold.
SAMKHYA AND YOGA.
The world was created according to some by Isvara ; according to others this world with living beings and lifeless things with its variety of pleasure and pain was produced from pahlāņa (pradhāna).52 The first of these two views is to be ascribed to the adherents of a theistic school, and the second to the Samkhya system, or we may take them to refer to the theistic and atheistic followers of the Samkhya philosophy.53
50 Vip.S. 1.5. 51 Cf. Sat. Br. VI.ii.1.5.; XIII. vii.1.8. 52 Sat.S. L.i.3.6. " See Jacobi, SBE, xiv, p. 244, n.4.