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SVASTI - Essays in Honour of Prof. Hampa Nagarajaiah
stanzas of the Uvavāiya (171). This classical concept - as I have been able to show in another publication (2000) — appears to have been formed under the influence of Abhidharma Buddhism. It seems likely that the classical Jaina concept of the soul, whether under the influence of Buddhism or otherwise, was developed along with the special ideas of karma that came to occupy Jaina thinkers. But whatever its historical justification, it represents a somewhat idiosyncratic development which remained, as far as we can see, the exclusive property of Jainism. And even here it appears to have little to connect it with the origins of this religion. One reason for thinking so is constituted by the early canonical passages which I mentioned. Another one is that this classical concept barely fits in the surroundings out of which Jainism arose, and to which it originally belonged. Let us have a closer look at these surroundings.
I have studied and analysed the cultural background of Jainism, Buddhism and other movements that were originally situated in the region east of the confluence of the two rivers Gangā and Yamunā in a book called Greater Magadha (2007). Jainism shared with some of the other religious movements a preoccupation with karmic retribution, which in their case meant the belief that all acts inevitably will have an effect, often in a future life. Many of these religious movements were concerned to avoid the new lives that would come about as a result of acts carried out in the present and preceding lives. Early Jainism emphasized the need to abstain from all physical and mental activity. In other words, the advanced practitioner should abstain from all acts, with the result that he would not create new bases for karmic retribution. Acts that had been carried out before, whether in this or a preceding life, could be immunized, i.e. forced to fructify in this life, through the pain produced by ascetic practices. Since the ascetic practices that were believed to bring this about consisted themselves largely in the abstention from all activity, the physical and mental immobilization pursued by the advanced Jaina ascetic served a double purpose: no new bases were laid for further karmic retribution, and the traces of acts carried out earlier were destroyed. This specific method to attain liberation from rebirth and karmic retribution did not crucially depend on any specific vision as to the true nature of the soul. Such a specific vision may have accompanied early Jainism, but we have already seen that the oldest canonical texts provide us with preciously little information to go by. There were however other religious movements at the same time and in the same region of northern India in which the concept of the soul did play a crucial role. These were the movements that believed that the soul, i.e. the real self of the human being (and of all other living beings for that matter), does not and cannot act by its very nature. Activity belongs to the body and the mind, both of which are essentially different from the inactive self. Karmic retribution, too, belongs for this reason to the realm of body and mind, without affecting the real self of a person. Knowledge of one's real self frees
