Studies In Umasvati And His Tattvartha Sutra

Author(s): G C Tripathi, Ashokkumar Singh
Publisher: Bhogilal Laherchand Institute of Indology

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Studies in Umāsvāti
it would seem to be the case that pramāda and kasāyas are envisioned as inherent components of actions that bind one in samsāra and therefore something that should be gotten rid of. Scarce though they may be, passages such as these, I believe, indicate that kasāya cannot be summarily disregarded as an integral part of karmic bondage in these early canonical sources. However, it certainly would be correct to say that in the first sections of the Ācārānga and Sūtrakrtānga, which were composed primarily to instruct the mendicant community in appropriate modes of conduct and to refute the views of other groups of mendicants, there is no 'technically formulated conception' of bondage. Nor is there any extended discussion here of the myriad of other processes that in their totality comprise Jain karma theory.
However, is it proper to assume that texts such as these should be encyclopedic in nature, that the material found in them constitute the totality of knowledge about karma at this time, and that a reconstruction of an early version of Jain karma theory can be made on the basis of what is found and what is absent in these sources? How should one evaluate the claims made by both Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras that portions of the early canon were 'lost and that later texts containing detailed discussions on karma such as the Prajñāpanāsūtra and the Şakhandāgama are based on the material from the twelfth Anga, the Drşivāda, which was in turn based on portions of earlier sources, the Pūrvas. It would, I believe, be inappropriate to accept such claims of an ancient authority for all material found in later texts at face value and to conclude that karma theory never changed. However, I believe it is also problematic to attempt to construct a 'pre-Umāsvāti' theory of karmic bondage based on these limited resources and in so doing exclude kasāya from early theories of karmic bondage.
Let us now turn to the second part of the problem. One, the incongruity between Tattvārthasūtra 6.5 and 6.6. I must admit