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NEW IDEOLOGIES NEW TRADITIONS
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optimum possession Millions of people opted for such a society They resolved to possess only the bare necessities of life The Lord never spelt out in absolute mathematical terms the limits of such a possession He gave the twin directions of limited possession_(1) an insistence on the purity of means adopted for acquisition and (2) an emphasis on austerity in personal life Such pursuants of conscientious acquisition were forbidden to indulge the following practices 1 Adulteration 2 Under-weighing 3 Supplying poorer stuff than the sample 4 Over-loading the beasts of burden 5 Harming another in respect of his means of livelihood
The Lord felt that traders travel to remote places and thus deprive the native inhabitants of their rights Such a practice leads to injury to others alongwith acquisition The Lord propounded travel-curbs to fight these tendencies Such believers of his who curbed their acquisition abstained from remote journey for trade They shunned acquisition and the resultant reward earned in distant places
The Lord induced a living faith in non-acquisition amongst the masses Puniya is a great example of this noble ideology King Shrenik offered to him half of his kingdom in lieu of an initiation into the observance of self-restraint (samayık)
'Puniya' declined the royal offer To barter in the domain of spiritual pursuits was not acceptable to him
'Puniya' was not wealthy He earned his livelihood by making cotton rolls for spinning on a wheel But he was a master of his own self evincing a remarkable degree of restraint He had little faith in the amassing of wealth in a few hands He proved to be a prominent follower of the principle of limited acquisition that Lord Mahavira propounded
The movement for non-acquisition as conceived by Lord Mahavira was a part of his movement for non-violence He had fully realised that non-acquisition remains unfulfilled so long as non-violence is unfulfilled An individual infatuated
