Studies in Jainology Prakrit Literature and Languages

Author(s): B K Khadabadi
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 48

Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
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society individuals and groups of people can squander money and material at will, in others individuals and groups go on begging or breathing abrupt poverty throughout life.
Remedies against these and other individual and socio-economic troubles or maladies, so spreadingly found among peoples of the present day world, are being sought at different levels, by different agencies and in different parts of the globe. But there seems to be a very little improvement. A deep and unbiased thinking over all this state of affairs would rather indicate that all these maladies have sprung up from the crisis of character of moral values in the present human society in general and a soothing change has to come from within; and, hence, remedies have to be necessarily directed at building up a healthy human character itself. For this, now, we have to remember, deliberate and bring into practice the words of great seers of ethico-religious and benevolent insight, who seriously and selflessely pondered, for long, over such and other troubles and problems and laid down means and methods of their solution for the welfare of manking at large. And before my mind, at this thoughtful moment, stands uppermost Lord Mahāvīra with his unique gospel of Acara-dharma, Ethica! Discipline.
Lord Mahavira, the last in the line of the 24 Jinas (the Victorious) or Tirthankaras (Ford-makers across the stream of existence) that flourished in India in the present cycle of time, promulgated and preached in historical days (600 B.C.) the great Acara-dharma (Ethical Discipline) for alleviating and redressing human suffering of varied kinds and magnitudes. It is a two-fold Ethical Discipline or Code of Conduct, one for the ascetics known as muni-dharma and the other for house-holders (the laity) known as Śravaka-dharma one to be practised in its perfection and the other partial (in a Sthūla form) or according to one's own reasonablc capacity (yatha-sakti)1.
Now we are concerned with the second one here. It mainly consists of five vows rules of conduct known as anu-vratas small vows. They are ahimsa - non- violence, satya - truthfulness,