Shravakachar of Vasunandini

Author(s): Signe Kirde
Publisher: Signe Kirde

Page 67

5.2 Catalogue of Vices
5 TRANSLATION: ŚR (57-205)
86-87) By consuming meat, [the vice of] haughtiness is increased [in him); due to haughtiness he takes to liquor. And if he also becomes a slave of dicing due to this [fault], he is prone to all the faults that have been mentioned.
In a secular book it has been described how brahmins went to heaven, but had fallen to earth, because they had eaten meat. Therefore, meat should not be consumed.
⚫ padiya Eating food, especially meat, is considered as an act which feeds passions.200 Due to the rising of the passions such as pride, wrath, and rage, sexual urge is increased. Cf. also (195).
The Fault of [Sexual Relations with] Prostitutes (vesā-dosa)
88) Whoever spends but one night with a prostitute consumes the rubbish of the Kärutas, Kirātas, Candālas, Domras, and Parsis.
• käruya-kiraya-camdala-domba-pärasiyāṇam ucchiṭṭham Vasunandin assumes that someone who has sexual relations with prostitutes eats the "rubbish", because the prostitute is familiar with various men without any discrimination, even the lowest ones. She also eats with them. Being with prostitutes amounts to become as impure as they are. The author mentions some low castes: Kāru(ta)s, craftsmen and artists, Kirātas, day workers associated with the tribes of the Bhils (Bhillas) in Central India, Canḍālas, offsprings from parents from mixed tribes or castes, Dombas and Parasas, merchants and workers from North Africa and Persia.2
201
89-92) Having realised someone who is passionately fallen in love [with her] the prostitute deprives the man of all belongings with hundreds of dirty
200/ "The attitude towards food is discussed in Dundas 1985. I owe this reference to Prof. Bollée. For the discrimination of religious and secular fields of knowledge see Mac VIII.857. There is a parallel for the myth of the "fallen brahmins" outside Jainism in the Mahavastu, Raja-vamsa, p. 285. When the world began to be illuminated by creatures, some manifested themselves by the power of will only. They left heaven when the universe began to evolve. Self-luminous, able to move in the sky, they fulfilled every wish. From the moment when some of them started to eat a mouthful of the essence of the earth, they became heavy and rough. They were deprived of their divine qualities.
201 Cf. Sheth 1923: 300, 308, 392, 464, 729; MW, p.275, 461, 620. Outside Jainism Pali ucchiṭth'-itthi denotes an "impure woman" (Trenckner/ Andersen 1924-1948:351). In Kṣemendra's Deśôpadeśa III.13ff., translated by Sato 1994:24-25, we find some illustrations of the life of a prostitute: "The harlot has never stopped since childhood her indiscriminate business of sexual union. Though she never desired it. Whose could that wanton woman be?".
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