Some Jaina Canonical Sutras

Author(s): Bimla Charn Law
Publisher: Royal Asiatic Society

Page 22

CHAPTER II
ĀCĀRANGA SUTRA (ĀYĀRAMGA SUTTA)
The Ācārūnga is the first Jaina unga. It contains important rules for the Jain monks and nuns. An attempt has been made here to compare these rules with those of the Hindus and Buddhists noticing their main points of agreement and difference. This text is a mixture of prose and verse which we so frequently meet with in Buddhist literature. The sermons contained in it consist mainly of exhortations and warnings. Both in this Sūtru and in the Sūtrukrtāngu we find some verses which in form and contents can be well included in the Pali Suttanipāta or Dhama pada. These belong to the ancient Indian Samana literature. This book has been edited for the PTS, London (1882), and translated into English by Jacobi in SBE, vol. xxii. It has also been cited by Schubring, Leipzig, 1910, and translated into German by him in Worte Jahāvīras. The Āgamodaya Samiti of Bombay has published an edition with commentary.
The rules of conduct as laid down in the Ācārūnga Sūtra. contain also the rules of decorum and etiquette. No penal laws are added to them. The Jain rules are classified in the Sūtru under such general heads as begging, walking, modes of speech, entry into other's possessions, postures, place of study, and attending to the calls of nature. Here begging includes the begging of food and drink, begging for a bowl, the begging of clothes, and begging for a residence or a couch. Under these sub-heads are to be found the rules governing the modes of eating and drinking, dressing and lying down. Walking includes travelling, crossing, swimming and other forins of movement. The postures are those which are involved in religious exercises.
The reasons or arguments behind these rules are based on such general principles as the avoidance of situations in which the monk or nun may be guilty of hurting or killing all forms of life, or of inconveniencing others, or of wounding social, moral or religious scruples of others, the avoidance of situations in which the monk or nun may run the risk of endangering his or her own position, or of receiving bodily injuries, or of feeling discomfort, or of being found guilty of theft or trespass, or of moral degradation, or of mental per. turbation, and the avoidance of all situations in which the monk or nun may be found acting under the slighest influence