Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India

Author(s): Pranabananda Jash
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

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Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India
ctive of any sect.
The outfit of the ascetics in general was of simplest and the lowest, but varied among the different sects.1" Of course, these were very slight and minor variances. The Brāhmaṇical monks usually used bark or ochre-coloured garments, though nudity was not unknown to the Dharmasastra and Sutra writers. Originally Buddhist monks used to wear 'cast-off' robes, but subsequently they were allowed to accept robes offered by the laity under some restrictions. The Jainas followed the principles relating to food and garment very rigidly. The Digambaras were known for the nudity of monks, though they allowed nuns to use robes.
Another interesting semblance in practice of these monks belonging to various schools of thought is that the days of the full-moon and newmoon were used for the Darśa-purṇamāsa of the Brahmanical society and for the Patimokkha of the Buddhists and for Posadha or posaha (i.e. temporarily becoming a monk) ceremonies of the Jainas.11
Without analysing minor details further in this respect it is rather prerequisite to make a brief review of the politico-socio-economic and religious conditions of the period just before the rise of the Parivrājaka sect in general and the Jaina Parivrājakas in parti
cular.
Rhys Davids rightly observes that religious and philosophical beliefs were extremely diverse in the age of Buddha which appears to have been an age of thought ferment.12 It cannot be denied that by the side of intellectual and spiritual advance there also occurred important and significant socio-economic and political changes in the sixth and the fifth centuries BC in eastern India. The rise of class society and imperial power in eastern India in the sixth century BC through despotic policy was the culmination of a historical process. The growth of towns and commerce and the organisation of trade and craft into guilds make the social landscape of this age entirely different from that of the preceding period. The emergence of money is noticeable and it must have involved critical changes in social life in its turn.
13
The accumulation of immense economic surplus in the hands of a few merchants in this period as recorded in the Päli Jātakas is to be noted in this connection. It was probably due to either by forcible exploitation of labour or by a revolutionary change in the mode of production. R.S. Sharma suggests that this change was