Some Aspects of Jainism in Eastern India

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

Page 83

Jaina Canonical Texts
to live with distinguished and learned (gitārtha) elders instead fo remaining alone." Thus, in the Jaina texts of the later period emphasis laid on the life of monks in monasteries (upāíraya) in which they must not allow any outsider (Uvāsaga) to spend even for a night. Monks have to undergo severe punishment, if they spent three nights outside vihāra without proper perinission.
Vassāvāsa or Rain-retreat
An exhaustive account regarding the Vassāväsa of Mahāvīra is found in the Kalpa-sūtra. The text also mentions the places where the great teacher spent the rainy seasons since he had renounced the life of a house-holder.
Eremitical tendencies in course of time gave way to the coenobitic among the Jainas. The institution of the Vassāvāsa appears to have been a contributory factor in this development. To the Jaina Parivrājakas, like that of the Buddhist as well as Brāhmaṇical, rain-retreat is compulsory, for it helps the ascetics to abstain from injury to living beings, even to vegetation lives which grow luxuriantly in this season. “When the rainy season has come and it is raining, many living beings are originated and many seeds just spring up, the roads contain many living beings, seeds etc. ... and should not wander from village to village but remain during the rainy season in one place."43 The Mülācāra" also mentions that a monk should stop touring in the rainy season and abstain from causing injury to vegetable beings which grow profusely during this time. It was so popular and common among the Jainas that the people criticised the Buddhist monks who did not adhere it at the begining: "How can these recluses, Sākyaputtiyas, walk on tour during the cold weather or hot weather and rain trampling down the crops and grasses, injuring life that is one-facultied and bringing many small creatures to destruction? Shall it be that these members of other's sects, whose rules are badly kept, cling to and prepare a rains residence, shall it be that birds having made their nests in the tree-tops, cling to a proper rains residence, which these recluses tiample on walking."45 Of course, Buddha later on prescribed the rules pertaining to the observance of indoor residence in the rainy season.
The Vassavāsa in Jainism,46 like Buddhism,"7 commences on the full moonday of Așādla and ends on the full moonday of Kärttika. The monks arc, of course, permitted to go to another place in