Sramana Tradation

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 52

Moral and Social Outlook of Siamaņism
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food at nights, not wearing garlands or use of perfumes and sleeping on a mat spread on the ground. These, again, become the Ten Silas by adding abstention from dancing, music and stage, and abstention from the use of gold and silver.85 The Brahmanical mendicant was similarly required to abstain from causing injury to living, beings, lying, misappropriation, incontinence and niggardliness. 3 6
It is hardly necessary to point out that there is a basic identity in the broad conception of ascetic life among the Buddhists, the Jainas and the Brahmaņical Dharmasūtras. This ideal consists in the training of the attitude of the ascetic and also involves a regulation of his relations with society. Vyasa in his commentary on the Yogasūtras says that Ahimsā is the chief vow and quotes an ancient Sankhya tradition to the effect that it is for the perfection of Ahimsā that the other vows are undertaken.37 A similar view of the matter may be easily discerned in Buddhist and Jaina literature. For example, Aryadeva declares that the Buddhas describe dharma compendiously as Ahimsā.38 Akalanka says 'ahimsāyāh pradhānatvādādau tadvacanam.'89 Respect for life and the total avoidance of violence is fundamental to ascetic life. Violence presupposes egoism, cupidity, intolerance, lack of self-restraint, ignorance of the nature of living beings and often fraud and treachery. On the other hand, the total avoidance of violence is not possible without self-control, giving up of egoistic claims and ambitions, recognition of the similarity of self and another and the cultivation of wantlessness. This emphasis on non-violence distinguishes the śramanic from the old Vedic tradition where animal sacrifices and meat-eating were common. Similarly victory in war was one of those things which the Vedic Aryans frequently prayed for. Their gods although generally wise and beneficient, were not unoften gods of might and power. Ya jña-dharma and Ksättra-dharma both 35. The ten Silas as well as the Sikkhā padas appear to have developed out of the
five Silas. See Pali Dictionary (Pali Text Society). 36. P. V. Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, Vol. II, Pt. II (Bhandarkar Oriental
Research Institute, Poona, 1941 ), pp. 930ff. 37. See my Bauddha Dharma ke Vikäsa ka Itihāsa (Lucknow, 1963), p. 123. 38. Catuḥsataka. 39. Tattvärtha vārttika.