Shravakachar of Vasunandini

Author(s): Signe Kirde
Publisher: Signe Kirde

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3.4 Guna-sthāna
3 SELF-PURIFICATION
reason for that might be the fact that the marganas have been conceived as a numerical pattern comparatively late. In the following I understand sammatta, samma-ithi, and damsana (translated into English; "true insight" or "enlightened attitude") as closely related terms. They include the "belief in the principles" of Jainism.
3.4
Guna-sthāna
The religious thinking of Vasunandin which is outlined in the section of Śr (57ff.) is constructed in the way of the theory or greater conceptualisation of the fourteen Guna-sthānas (gsths.). For better understanding this pattern with its fourteen items or stages shall be introduced briefly. The stages nos. I-III are concerned mainly with the condition of false and mixed insight. They refer especially to the rebirth in non-human animal bodies. While in the stages nos. IV-V we find the outline of the ethics of the Jain layman, from the stages nos. VIIff. onwards there are some characteristics of the ideal mendicant and the path to final emancipation. By taking to account canonical scriptures such as Uttarajjhāyā, chapters V and XXXVI, and post-canonical scriptures such as Mac II.59ff. we might come to the conlusion that those concepts were motivated to a great part by the aim to develop a method to control the "death against one's will". In the above mentioned scriptures there appears only a very rough classification of the "death of the fool" and the "death of the wise" and the preventive measure to avoid an "unlucky rebirth". The death of the layman, in general, is defined as being two-sided, bala-pandita, the combination of "foolish and wise" attitudes and behaviour. In Śr (59ff.) there are instructive examples of ordinary people who fail in true insight, right knowledge and conduct. And in (125ff.) Vasunandin refers to stories known from the Dig. Puranas, which give accounts of the life of evil-doers who attained a miserable rebirth. The stage of "mixed attitudes" can be described more precisely as the "mixed taste of right attitude" in the stages I-III. In (125-133) With regard to the Dig. "doctrine of transmigration" the following pattern of the gsths. might have served well to explain the difference in biological species, classes and the difference in terms of social hierarchies.
With the fourth and fifth stages Jain authors refer to the human birth. Those stages concern the minor and greater vows of non-possession or nonpossessiveness (aparigraha) and non-violence (ahimsa). Williams 1963:307ff. discusses also the supplementary rituals, for instance the pratyakhyānam, the "avoidance of what is unfitting in order to prevent" evil deeds in the future. It is possible to relate those rituals directly to gsths., i.e. no. IV and V. The fifth stage, deśa-virata, prescribes for the layman to take the minor vows.60
60 See also Śr (209ff.). Samantabhadra states in Rk, chapter V.4ff. that the stage of
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